Waukesha North Drawn Into 280-Mile Playoff Trip; Coach Calls It 'Longest In Program History'

WAUKESHA — The WIAA released its football playoff brackets Tuesday afternoon, and by Tuesday evening, Waukesha North head coach Tom Redfield had already measured the distance to the Northstars' first-round opponent three separate times, hoping for a different number.

It stayed at 280 miles. North, seeded into a northern bracket despite being located in the southeastern part of the state, draws Rhinelander High School, a trip that Redfield's own mapping app estimates at four hours and 42 minutes each way, assuming no construction on Highway 51 and no stops.

"This is the longest road trip in our program's 16-year tenure, and that includes the year we went to a scrimmage in Illinois and the bus got lost near Kenosha," Redfield said. "We are treating this as a business trip. A very long business trip with a bathroom stop in Wausau."

An overnight problem

Because the game kicks off at 1 p.m. Saturday and Redfield does not want his offensive line standing on a bus seat cushion for five hours the morning of a playoff game, the team will travel Friday night and stay at a hotel in Rhinelander, a town North's athletic department had to look up on a map as recently as Wednesday.

Transportation coordinator Denise Holtzclaw has spent the week calling every charter company within 40 miles of Waukesha, three of which quoted her rates she described as "a number I had to say out loud to make sure it was real." She eventually booked a single 56-passenger coach with what the company's website calls a "functioning onboard restroom," a phrase Holtzclaw asked them to clarify twice.

"I asked if functioning meant the door locks or the toilet flushes, and they said both, probably," Holtzclaw said. "We're bringing air freshener either way."

South and West have their own headaches

Waukesha North isn't the only local team with travel logistics to sort out. Waukesha South's Blackshirts drew a 75-mile trip to Oshkosh, a distance South head coach Pete Varga called "basically a Culver's run with a game attached." The Blackshirts will travel by bus Saturday morning and plan to stop in Fond du Lac for a pregame meal, a tradition Varga said started three years ago when the team got stuck behind a stalled semi and ate gas station pizza instead.

Waukesha West's Wolverines, by contrast, got the shortest draw of the three programs: a 15-mile trip to Wauwatosa. The catch is timing. West's regional game falls just six days after its district final, the tightest turnaround any of the three Waukesha programs will face, and head coach Marty Oleszak said the coaching staff spent Wednesday night watching Wauwatosa film on a laptop propped against a bag of frozen peas meant for a player's shoulder.

"We've got one day to install a new blitz package and no days to feel sorry for ourselves about it."

— Marty Oleszak, Waukesha West head coach

The 280-mile question

Back at North, Redfield said the team will treat the long bus ride as film study time, with players rotating through tablets loaded with cutups of Rhinelander's offense. He's less certain how to handle the return trip if North wins, since Sunday would mean turning around for a second-round game the following weekend somewhere even the mapping app hasn't fully loaded yet.

"We'll figure out that bridge when we get to it," Redfield said. "Right now I'm just making sure we have enough snacks for 560 combined miles. I bought four cases of the big pretzels.

Holtzclaw said the bus is scheduled to depart the North parking lot at 4:30 p.m. Friday, with a planned rest stop in Wausau and a second, unplanned rest stop wherever the first one turns out to be inadequate. Fans hoping to follow along in person, she added, should budget for the same 4-hour, 42-minute drive and bring their own bathroom contingency plan.