Blizzard of 1978: Looking back on memorable travel stories involving Miami basketball, UD wrestling

This snowstorm doesn’t measure up, though, to the Blizzard of 1978, which paralyzed the region and created some memorable travel stories for area teams.

For example, the Miami University men’s basketball team, which had a banner season with a NCAA tournament victory against Marquette in 1978, was forced to take shelter in the Vandalia jail.

Hal McCoy wrote about the team’s experience in the Dayton Daily News the following week.

AFTER THE BLIZZARD OF ’78, WHAT’S A LITTLE OL’ HOOP GAME

Darrell Hedric admits that sometimes it seems his life revolves around a brown leather bag filled with air and his destiny is controlled by how good a bunch of teenagers in short britches are at tossing that bag through an iron ring.

For three days last week, the Miami University basketball coach and his team discovered what real life means.

“Basketball is not that important. The functions of life are much more important,” Hedric said.

Late Wednesday night in Toledo, Hedric and his team were celebrating the superficiality athletics can sometimes be — a gratifying 79-70 victory that gave them the lead in the Mid-American Conference. It was spitting snow and sleeting when the game began, so Hedric ordered box lunches from the Blue Moon Restaurant near the Toledo campus so the team could bus for home immediately after the game.

When the game ended, it was merely raining so the team relaxed on their Price Hill bus and devoured lunch. The further south they went, the worse the weather became.

“Near Wapakoneta, it began snowing heavily,” said Hedric. “It was 1:30 a.m. (Thursday) and the wind began howling for the next two hours like I’ve never seen. We couldn’t see beyond the front of the bus and we creeped past jack-knifed trucks and stalled cars. Once, the bus conked out near the top of a hill and the wind began blowing us back down. We were a mile away from Vandaiia.”

Bus driver Harold Reese restarted his rig and limped into Vandalia, finding a 24-hour donut shop, from where the police were called.

That’s when the learning experience began.

Vandalia police took in the team, giving them jail cells and the city council chambers for sleeping quarters.

“Hey, it was no problem for us,” said Hedric. “We were warm, we had food and we could sack out on the floor. I take my hat off to those Vandalia people. Police Chief Ray Nardini and City Manager Mike Ratcliff. These guys were super.

“Our kids discovered how a community’s police and fire departments operate in a panic situation,” Hedric said. “It was a typical American thing, everybody pitching in. They had 1,001 things to do besides comfort us. They ran medicine to heart patients and diabetics. A couple of people had heart attacks, and they got them to a medical center.”

One heart attack victim was Reese, the bus driver, and the Vandalia emergency people got him to Dayton’s Good Samaritan Hospital: All seven lines into the Vandalia center were jammed and Miami players manned telephones and CB radios.

“These 18 and 19-year-old kids thought they were studs who’ll never get old,” Hedric said “Reality hit them — especially after they spent five hours working at the Franklin Nursing Home, manning bedpans, bathing old people and running errands to the grocery store.”

On Friday, at 12:15 p.m., the Miamians got clearance to depart for Oxford. Amazingly, another Price Hill driver was visiting friends in Vandalia and took over for Reese. The normal one-hour trip to Oxford took five hours, the last 20 miles across snow-clogged U.S. 27 taking 2½ hours. Two trucks and a snow blower preceded the Miami bus into Oxford, the first transportation to reach the hilly college community in two days.

The team had done nothing for two days but read, play cards, eat, study, sleep and run mercy missions so Hedric called a two-hour practice Saturday from 1 to 3.

“Needless to say, we practiced with a tired demeanor,” said Hedric. “But we needed it. We couldn’t have played our scheduled game today (Northern Illinois).”

That game will be played Monday night in Oxford.

“It was a nightmarish experience, but it was an education for the kids to see what happens during a crisis. Man, what an operation they run in Vandalia,” said Hedric. Taking basketball for what it’s really worth should be easter for those young men."

That wasn’t the only crazy story that week involving a local team. The University of Dayton wrestling team was stranded in a van, without heat, on Route 35 near Washington Court House on the way back from a match at Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va.

Dave Long, of the Dayton Daily News, wrote about the ordeal experienced by coach Will Place and 11 wrestlers days later.

UD WRESTLERS SURVIVE ICY BRUSH WITH DEATH

About two miles west of I-71, the van hit a drift and became stuck.

“We got out and managed to push it out and get turned around,” said Ron Woods, a heavyweight who graduated from Patterson Co-Op. “But then we got stuck again and couldn’t move.”

With visibility gone and the winds gusting to 70 miles per hour, the group elected to remain in the van.

“We knew we had passed a motel and truck stop not too far back, but we had no idea how far it was.” said Place. “We just decided to stay with the van and try and wait out the storm.”

The van become stuck around 3 a.m.

“We ran the engine except for 10 or 15 minutes of each hour to try and keep the van warm,” continued Place. “But the heater doesn’t work too well. Our spirits were pretty good until the cold started getting to everyone after a couple of hours. We huddled everyone up front around the drivers’ seat to try and stay warm. But after a while even that didn’t help.

None of the group slept.

“We were too worried about each other,” Place said. “That’s what kept us going in the van. We were all too worried that if anyone fell asleep, he’d get frostbite.”

When the gas gauge dipped below a quarter of a tank around 6 a.m. the decision was made to try to make it to the truck stop. Place, Tom Henderson and Doug Wilson left the van. They cut two seats belts to use as lifelines.

“You couldn’t see more than three feet in front of you,” said Place. “If one of us would have let go, I don’t think we could have found him.”

The truck stop-motel complex was three-quarters of a mile away but took almost 40 minutes to reach. Once the three reached shelter, they had trouble warming up.

“There was no electricity,” said Place. “We did manage to warm up a little bit and the wind went down some. Once we knew where we were, it didn’t take that long to get back to the van and get the rest of the guys out.”