First road trip of season a good test for Mules

The caravan pulled out of Tom Hoover Way just before 11 a.m. Friday, heading to Columbia.

The Mules football team was scheduled to kick off in eight hours against Battle in that city. Everybody loaded up in a charter bus, a small school bus and a few pickup trucks for the journey.

They stopped in an oasis called Marquette High School on the edge of Clarkson Valley for food, water and a walk-through. Players were able to stretch their legs and use the restroom.

Dave Porter, who coached at Poplar Bluff in the 1980s, was there to greet the coaching staff along with the Marquette coach and athletic director.

With everybody back on the bus, the caravan pulled out and headed to Columbia and a date with the Spartans.

Why, one might ask, is the football team traveling halfway across the state to play this game and this opponent?

It’s a complex question with lots of factors.

Bottom line — this is the best thing for this team at this time.

“I just keep telling the kids, win, lose or draw, these are the kind of games we need to play,” Mules coach David Sievers said earlier in the week.

Sievers and Athletic Director Kent Keith must find five opponents to fill out the football schedule each year since Poplar Bluff only has four conference opponents. Some years that can be easy, others harder.

Because of Poplar Bluff’s enrollment size, the Mules are not an attractive opponent for the smaller schools in Southeast Missouri. In the 1970s, Poplar Bluff played Dexter, Charleston, Kennett and Perryville and only had to make trips to Springfield or St. Louis to fill two weeks.

Kennett added Poplar Bluff last year for the first time since 1995, but outside the SEMO North rivals, the longest series with an opponent is Hillsboro since 2014 (minus last year’s COVID-19 cancelation).

Since 1920, the Mules have played 90 different opponents from Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky. Some, like Bloomfield and Puxico, don’t play football anymore. Once, the Mules drove four hours to play a neutral-site game against a team that had a 3 1/2-hour trip.

All teams at Poplar Bluff are faced with long trips — the soccer team was in Rolla on Friday and the softball team will be in Columbia next week.

Friday was the football team’s first trip to Columbia since 2001 when the Mules played across town at Hickman.

In the last five years, the Mules have played 16 different opponents from Agape Boarding School, MICDS, Sumner, Riverview Gardens, Ritenour, Chaminade, St. Charles, DeSoto and now Battle.

It doesn’t help Poplar Bluff that many of the schools of the same size in and around St. Louis, where they can schedule a short drive across town to play instead of down Highway 67.

Growing up in St. Louis, Poplar Bluff seemed like it was on the other side of the world, or at least the Arkansas border, when vacation took us to Lake Wappapello.

Like my parents with a promise of extra candy for the car ride, Poplar Bluff can sweeten the deal for schools to come play at Mules Stadium. Battle, for example, is helping offset travel and other costs for Friday’s trip.

Battle is also offering the Mules a test of sorts as both teams will be able to see where they stand in the midpoint of the regular season. The Spartans have reached the state playoffs in six of the last seven seasons and were considered among the top teams in Class 5.

It would be better if MSHSAA released the class and district assignments earlier or, better yet, took care of scheduling by forcing teams in the same district to play to help better seed the postseason.

Poplar Bluff and Jackson have met twice in a season in three of the last four years but only see Seckman, Oakville, Mehlville and Fox in the district playoff.

Alas, MSHSAA is a lot like the NCAA in that it only worries about managing the postseason and not how anybody gets there. So while the traditions of college football hold back the expansion of the playoffs but treat fans to Missouri at Boston College, high schools like Poplar Bluff must trek halfway across the state to play a regular season game.

Then again, the players were fired up about the charter bus.