Columnist Dean Juipe: Coaches can also be chauffeurs

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or 259-4084.

Among the many qualifications necessary to coach sports at the collegiate level is one seldom discussed but inherently valuable: The ability, and willingness, to drive the team bus.

It's a responsibility no one really welcomes, yet one someone has to accept. And that someone is usually the head coach.

Aside from football and basketball, coaches are driving their players -- usually in 15-seat vans -- on the occasional road trip, as well as from airports and hotels to the sites of their team's games.

While you may not see John Robinson or Bill Bayno behind the wheel, other UNLV coaches routinely double as chauffeurs.

"We'll have the occasional breakdown or flat tire and I drive for just that reason," UNLV tennis coach Larry Easley said Tuesday. "As the head coach, it's a responsibility I have to take."

Easley and his UNLV counterparts have sufficient funding to fly to most out-of-state events, although they'll drive when the destination is Southern California. But many other collegiate teams aren't as fortunate, and in the past six weeks there has been a rash of van accidents in which the passengers were college athletes.

There have been five wrecks since Dec. 29, including one last week in Texas that took the life of four Prairie View track athletes. Six others were injured in that mishap.

The other incidents include: 12 members of the Wisconsin-Oshkosh swimming team were injured in a Jan. 30 wreck; five members of the DePaul track team were injured in a Jan. 22 wreck; 10 were injured and one died Jan. 13 when a van carrying the Kenyon (Ohio) College swimming team crashed; and five members of the Urbana (Ohio) University men's basketball team were injured in a Dec. 29 accident.

The toll: five dead, 38 injured. While icy roads played a role in three of the accidents, fatigue may have been a contributing factor as two of the teams -- Kenyon and Prairie View -- were in the midst of lengthy trips. Kenyon was returning to Ohio from Florida, while Prairie View was en route to Arkansas from Texas.

The drivers of the vehicles involved in these wrecks include two student athletes, two assistant coaches and one team manager.

"It's unrealistic for us to drive to most places," Easley said. "We try to do things right without spoiling the kids. But when I was at Long Beach State, we drove everywhere; we'd drive to San Francisco or to Arizona and it was a real burden.

"You have to constantly be aware that things can happen."

The situation is less severe at UNLV because the very nature of the diverse and far-reaching Mountain West Conference requires its teams to travel by air. Yet all but the most privileged of UNLV's teams have become familiar with the school's fleet of vans when the destination is Southern California or, on occasion, Utah.

The situation varies from school to school and the NCAA has no fixed policy on travel arrangements, although it does encourage a 400-mile limit when teams are traveling by land. Obviously, the key factor in how a school transports its teams relates directly to its sports budget.

But in the aftermath of the accident involving the Kenyon College swim team, the school has found the money to upgrade. Henceforth, its teams will travel by chartered bus.

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