Delta navigating finances, logistics, check-out times in latest state run

Everyone always remembers the excitement and emotions of making the trip to state. It’s an experience unlike any other, and countless athletes can recall that feeling.

But it’s not easy. One of the most overlooked aspects of the entire experience, perhaps, is what it really takes to get there.

Not the wins, the points, the upsets or expected outcomes; it costs a lot of money to send a team to the state championship series, and puts a lot of stress on the organization.

For a school such as Delta, which is expected to stay three nights in Columbia, Missouri, it can get tough.

Hotels are already packed out for the week, and accompanying costs include food, drink and even as much as renting a floor to shoot on after MSHSAA failed to secure a Thursday practice location.

For coach David Heeb, he was quick to point out that this wasn’t always the case.

“How long have you got?” Heeb began, laughing about the depth of the subject.

“I've been doing this long enough that I remember when MSHSAA paid for your hotels. When we first went years ago back when I was coaching the boys in Bell City, your hotels were covered.”

In the years that have elapsed since Heeb’s first championship with Bell City in 2002, much has changed within the dynamic of the trip to state.

This includes, of course, the burden that which the schools face financially when making the trip to the state tournament.

“Now, and it’s been this way for years, MSHSAA doesn't cover your hotels at all,” Heeb said.

“It’s 100 percent on the schools. If you're going to feed the kids, that's also entirely on the schools or the parents. You’ve got to pay for your kids to eat.”

As of Tuesday morning, the Bobcats are currently riding the bus hot en route to Central Missouri to get prepared for Wednesday action against Northeast High School out of Cairo, Missouri.

Slated for a 6 p.m. tip-off in the semifinals, the state organization slotted hotel rooms for Delta on Wednesday and Thursday.

Not that MSHSAA bought the hotel rooms for Delta, just reserved them. Delta has a spot in the hotel; after the game.

For the residents of Cairo, this bodes excellently as the drive to Columbia is just 38 minutes according to Google Maps. For Delta, that drive is nearly four hours.

Instead, the Bobcats have to find their own hotel for Tuesday night just to avoid being sluggish and exhausted from a day-long bus ride against a tough semifinal opponent.

“There were no hotels for us to go up there tonight,” Heeb said. “They just expected us to drive up there the day of the game and play, or to just find your own hotel.”

Obviously, Delta found its own hotel for Tuesday – the same as it’ll stay in on Wednesday and Thursday.

But because of this, the Bobcats find themselves checking out of the hotel in the morning, going about all of their practice, pregame planning and daily activities before checking back into the same hotel; all before leaving for their state semifinal.

In case you were wondering, yes, this stress does largely take away from the gameday experience and diminishes focus on the task at hand.

All of this, naturally, to avoid giving Northeast a gameday advantage on the floor as the same situation doesn’t apply even closely to what the Bearcats will experience.

“The school we're playing is 40 minutes from Mizzou Arena,” Heeb said.

“If they get to stay at home, and we're driving up the day of the game, that's a tremendous advantage for them.”

As noted earlier in the piece, Delta is out of a practice spot on Thursday. That’s the day of the state championship game.

If Delta took down Northeast on Wednesday, or had to prepare for a third-place game after a tough loss, it wouldn’t have anywhere to do so.

In the past, a floor to practice on was something that MSHSAA provided – often at the state championship site, this year being Mizzou Arena.

“This is brand new,” Heeb said. “This is the first year this has ever happened.

“They don't have a practice spot for us this year. You always got to practice at Mizzou arena, or when we were in Springfield at Missouri State. That's a really neat experience for the kids to get to go in and kind of tour the arena and go into practice facilities.

“That was a neat experience. This year, we got told that we can't do that. We have to find our own place to practice.”

Instead, Heeb and Company sought down an open court at a local rec center so that the Bobcats could put up shots before the game.

No Mizzou Arena, no Columbia College. Just your local gym; that’s likely the situation that many schools are dealing with this week.

As if the scheduling nightmare of finding a hotel, places to practice or footing the bill as a school wasn’t already enough, in come the challenges of missing school, work, etcetera.

The town of Delta is one with many hardworking, blue-collar citizens who need to be at work in order for the economy to function.

Those citizens love little more than supporting their school and their Ladycats, as Heeb was quick to mention in a Tuesday phone interview.

But when tasked with making a four-hour trip to Mid-Missouri, it’s nearly impossible to get the fans to travel as they typically do for a multiple-day vacation in the middle of the work week.

After bringing hundreds of diehard, blue-blood fans to Chadwick a week ago, a place of similar distance to Delta as Columbia, it’ll be hard on the community to make it out to the state championship series in full.

“Personally, I think it’s ridiculous to ask parents to take off in the middle of the week and drive across the state,” Heeb said.

“My wife is losing money to go to state because she can't work, you know? I'm sure she's not the only one. You have to take off of work to go.

“I think most people would be okay with Friday and Saturday. You’ve just got to take off on Friday, so it's not the end of the world. But to do it in the middle of a week like this, it’s just increasing the costs.”

Overall, it feels like the state championships are operated in a method that directly conflicts with how Delta needs it to be operated.

It’s not designed for schools needing to drive four hours to play a game, nor for the convenience of the hardworking family, friends and loved ones who want to support their team.

“I want to say this strongly: the people at MSHSAA are good people, and they mean well,” Heeb said.

“It's not them.”

The overarching problem with the state championships and state organization’s setup, as Heeb harped on, is the method in which the power is distributed.

The power is not vested solely in MSHSAA’s top executives, but largely in the democratic power of the member schools.

“MSHSAA is an organization that kind of cannibalizes itself because it’s run by its member schools.”

Schools in St. Louis and Kansas City, as well as many other regions of the state that cannot relate to Delta or countless other southeastern schools, are getting the voice for our schools.

This is something Heeb takes up a large issue with, and he hasn’t been afraid to voice his opinion on the matter as it continues to spiral out of his control.

“What happens is, you get a little group of those coaches together that find something beneficial to them, and they get it on the ballot.

“Then it's the, ‘Do you guys want to do Choice A or Choice B?’ Both of them might be horrible choices, but the schools have got to vote for one of them.

“That's how we end up with things like this.”

For Delta, it’s been a phenomenal year. In fact, it’s been a phenomenal many years.

Since Heeb took over in 2018, reviving the historically-dominant Ladycats program from its extinction, he’s gone 129-37 over a six-year span, including five district titles and two final four berths.

In fact, over the past four seasons going back to 2021, that record is an even more impressive 102-11.

This is to say, winning has come fairly naturally for the Ladycats over the years. The problem isn’t where they play, or when.

It lies in the logistics. The issue of getting people to games, paying thousands of dollars for hotels, food, practice courts and more.

For a school like Delta, it’s become a yearly concern. Worse yet, it doesn’t appear to be stopping any time soon.

“If the winners and the losers are both complaining about the same thing, you know there’s a problem.”