Chaperoning a sports team is a lot of responsibility. They take a lot of planning and coordinating. Most of the time this preparation allows for flawless and fun trips. However, when things go wrong...you rely on and remember the helpers...here is how we made the best of a trip they will never forget. (I have included pictures however as the girls are under 18, their faces have been blurred out)
Before I get started too far, I have to tell you how amazing these girls are.
Words can not state how fortunate I am to have the privilege of chaperoning these girls. They are such good girls. Always willing to step up and help when needed. This trip could have been so very different if I had a different group of girls.
Our trip started out great. On the way to our showcase, we had a small hiccup and our connection flight to Houston was delayed but other than that, things were off to a good start.
Another small hiccup came when one of the girls had a really bad migraine the 3rd night in Houston. That was easily remedied by moving one of the girls out of her room and into another one as we were going to have her room go to bed early. She went to bed at 8pm and woke up ready to play the next day.
We arrived to Houston on Friday. They had games Saturday, Sunday and Monday. They showed up and played well. Showcases are long and so by the time we were headed home they are all ready to go. At this point, not only are they ready to be home and in their own beds but they also have homework and school that they need to get back to. These girls not only take their soccer seriously but they all are fantastic students. The average GPA on this team is 3.87 on a 4.0 scale.
Parents on our team who had flown Delta to come down to watch the girls started to get the texts and notifications that there was a storm approaching back home and if they wanted to schedule an earlier flight to get home, they could and probably should. These parents changed their flights and were home Monday night.
I was hopeful that since our airline had not notified us at all that we were going to be okay...I could not have been more wrong!
Now I will not mention the airline we were on however I'm sure you will all be able to guess because I will mention other airlines that handled the weather and the situation so much better.
We started to head back home Tuesday. We left our hotel at 7:45am, dropped off the rental vans, checked into our flight.
Our flight left Houston at 10:30am connecting through Denver. We were supposed to leave Denver at 2:55pm to get home around 4:30pm... This is where things started to unravel...as the plane touched down and I turned my phone on, I immediately received a text from another Mom at home letting me know our connection flight getting home was cancelled. I then looked at all of the flights our airline had that night and all the flights had been cancelled. I had 15 girls that I was responsible for!
I quickly got off the plane and went straight to the gate/guest services desk...they told me the soonest they could get us out was Thursday morning. We were going to have to overnight in Denver for 2 nights.
It was disappointing to say the least. How could our airline let me get on a flight with 15girls when we could have stayed in Houston. In Houston, we had a hotel and a car rental...I had none of that in Denver. Remember we had no notifications from the airline so I assumed everything was proceeding as planned. When I found out our flight was cancelled, I knew that United and Delta were still flying! United had a flight that got home 15minutes before ours was supposed to depart and Delta had a flight that would leave an hour after our flight was supposed to leave. Not only was our airline the only one cancelling flights they also refused to reimburse or put us up in a hotel to accommodate the girls because they claimed it was weather related. I begged our airline to please at least get me the girls bags if we were going to be stranded. Reluctantly they agreed.
Parents for 3 of my girls quickly scrambled to get them out of Denver. They quickly booked flights on Delta to get them home (leaving an hour after ours was supposed to leave). Remember United and Delta were still flying!
One of these 3 girl's Mom called me and apologized but explained that they needed to get their daughter home for a Concurrent Enrollment (High School&College dual credit class) class that would dock an entire grade level if she had any more absences. This could affect her scholarship for college so her concerns was totally understandable. I told her not to feel bad. Then as I was standing there talking on the phone with this Mom, another one of these 3 girls came up in tears letting me know her Mom got her a ticket on this Delta flight as well but she didn't want to leave us. She did not want to leave her teammates stranded. She was in tears saying she wanted to stay with us. I assured this girl that it was okay, to get home and rest.
These 3 girls now departed for their gate to catch their flight home. I was now down to 12 girls.
Remember the Mom at home that first notified me of our cancelation? Our helper #1: I quickly called her and asked her to get me a hotel for the 12 girls, myself and 1 other chaperone. She successfully booked us a hotel.
We then proceeded to baggage claim to retrieve the bags. As we headed to baggage claim, I had another girl in tears as she wanted to get home. This was scary for these girls. They had never experienced this before. We got to baggage claim and then waited there for 2 hours for the bags to finally come.
We gathered not only the bags for the 12 girls I had but we also had to hold onto the 3 other girls bags that got out. We collected the bags and went out to meet our shuttle van to the hotel. The shuttle driver looked at my group and almost turned us away because we had too many for the van. He saw the tired eyes of my girls. He squished us all in as our hotel was not even a mile away. Our helper #2. We got to our hotel. We could breath a little. We were safe. We had hotel rooms and the hotel had breakfast. Thankfully we had 2 food options close. One restaurant on the other side of the hotel parking lot and another 0.25miles down the road. We were going to be okay.
We had fun with it.
After getting to the hotel, 2 more girls had parents who got them on another Delta flight that was to leave in the morning. Sadly this flight got cancelled. The girls had taken the shuttle to the airport to catch their new flight only to return. The girls made these 2 girls welcome home signs.
Although their new flight had also been cancelled, Delta offered to reimburse them for their required lodgings. Unfortunately, the rooms were under my name so will most likely not be reimbursed, but how fantastic that was that Delta not only offered but was happy to do so!! I'm now an even bigger fan of Delta!
Wednesday the girls spent time catching up on homework, while the other chaperone and I tried to work remotely a little. One of our girls, had family in Denver who brought us Chick Fit-A for lunch (Helper #3)
The last night we were in Denver, the girls made us chaperones letters and placed them on our hotel door thanking us for everything. (I have included a picture of our door with the names blurred below) Seriously if I had to be stranded in Denver, these are the girls I would choose to be stranded with!
Wednesday night came to an end and we were all so excited when that Thursday morning came. Helper #4. The hotel reserved a bigger shuttle to get us all back to the airport. We were going home!!
When we got to the airport and began checking in, this same airline that had us stranded in Denver only had half of us with ticketed reservations! Myself and 6 of our girls did not have a ticket! So half of us moved on to security while the other half stayed with me at the ticket counter to try to get a place on the flight as well. All I kept thinking is well at least I'm down to only 6 and 6 of the girls can get home. Thankfully the flight had room for us all to get on but that could have been bad. No apologies! No nothing! Thankfully that was a near miss... We got on the plane.
Everyone made it home in one piece. We were safe!
Friday however, 1 of our girls went to the Pediatrician because they had Bed Bug bites. After talking and comparing, 4 girls had bites... These 4 had all shared a room in Houston. So although we thought our trip was over, now the girls and us chaperones spent Friday trying to ensure no bed bugs came home with us. The cleaning of everything and laundry became the finishing touch to our memorable trip.
On trips like this sometimes all you can do is laugh and remember the helpers! Thank you to our helpers!!
Team Travel Trips: Organization becomes key! (I've included a link to the digital template for My Team Mom/Dad Binder that I have used for organization needs for helping my children's soccer team)
**Please take note, my views are my own and are not associated or representative of my employer(s). This website and its associated platforms are for education purposes only and not medical advice.
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