It seems to me that with all the advancement in technology that has gone on in the last 35 years in all fields of life that someone would have by now improved the school bus.
We have gone from records to IPODs via 8-tracks, cassettes, boom boxes and CDs. We have gone from antenna television with three or four channels to satellite with more than 200 channels, from black telephones that had party lines to cell phones on everybody that work everywhere. We have gone from expensive calculators that only added and subtracted and stuff like that to computers on most people’s desks that cost about the same amount of money. We have generally made vast improvement in all areas of life.
But not in the school bus for some reason. That begs for the simple question of “Why?”
I had the privilege of going with the softball team to Richfield a couple of weeks ago to participate with the sophomores and junior varsity in a tournament. Evidently coaching must be safer than umpiring because I came home whole although it was not the buses fault. Buses have a jarring ride to them and driving the road from Ferron to the freeway gives added meaning to speed bumps. That road is horrible. I have been on thrill rides at Lagoon that were less scary and Lorna is a good driver.
Eve Guymon and I coached the sophomores. We lost our first game to Canyon View 3-1 and I can truly say that we got the wrong end of several calls in the game by a bad umpire. We then defeated Enterprise by four or five runs before we absolutely killed Pine View by 13.
I would like to say that the coaching got better but it was really the players that got better and better as the games went on. The sophomore team, a team that consisted of two sophomores and eight freshmen, listened, bought into the philosophy of the coaches and played like winners. It was fun. The other team for Emery also did well as they also won two of their three games.
So back to the school buses, why do they still ride like that? Don’t they make better shocks? Can’t the seats be just a little more comfortable? No wonder road games are harder to win than contests at home. No wonder coaches hate riding the bus. No wonder players prefer riding home with mom and dad rather than the bus.
And now one last item. Isn’t it amazing that we really do not see what we think that we see until we have the opportunity to watch it in slow motion. I would dare say that on any one live event that happens in the twinkling of an eye, that if you have 10 people watching you will have 10 different opinions.
I asked the girls on the bus what they saw when I happened to get hit by that errant pitch and true to form I got different opinions from each and everyone. That is the same result from the fan base in the stands. We most often get the whole picture but we do not focus on a single frame of that picture.
So with that being said, I have decided to settle on my interpretation of events and leave it at that.
OK, one really last item. After the game the team was eating at a restaurant in Salina and one of the girls would not eat breakfast food if no one else would. She wanted company. So when I asked Chantelle her name, she wanted to know why. A teammate jumped in and said, “you’re going to make the paper.” Na-na-na-na. I did not want to disappoint.
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