With only a few high schools per county, the Aspen sports teams are bound to travel far for their games. Moffat, Colorado, is one of the furthest places the Aspen Volleyball Team has to travel to. A four-hour bus ride away, excluding traffic, creates quite a hassle.  The AHS volleyball players, however, are up for the journey if it means playing the sport they love.

On Saturday August 27, all members of the Varsity, JV, and C teams hopped on a bus at 6:30 a.m. Some who lived farther away woke up as early as 5:30.

“My whole weekend was revolved around this because it was a super early morning and we were supposed to get back pretty late,” sophomore student and varsity player Mary Williams said.

The girls arrived about an hour prior to the start of the game. Although no team members or coaches from Moffat were at the school yet, they assumed they would be coming soon. To occupy their time, they went to grab a bite to eat. Afterward, they waited for another hour and a half, but to no avail; the Moffat team still did not show, and the school doors remained locked. This was confusing for a team who was expecting opponents.

According to the AHS athletic director, Jay Maher, AHS confirmed the game with the Moffat school, but in the last week, their athletic director and principal resigned. With that, the confirmation on their end was lost.

“They confirmed many, many times before. [AHS] confirms usually a week in advance, and in this case, they did confirm a week in advance, but they never got a response,” parent of sophomore volleyball member JB Turbidy said.

With that, the teams arrived and parents were on their way to cheer on their kids or pick them up, Turbidy being one of them.

“It was a waste of time, but I think the school has put policies in place and procedures in place to make sure this won’t happen again,” Turbidy explained.

AHS principal Tharyn Mulberry and Maher apologized, and said they will be more on top of these situations in the future.

The silver lining to the story is that even though this event was time consuming, the girls made the best of the situation.