Kent State QB Colin Reardon shares snow tales
The Kent State football team left Tuesday morning for what was supposed to be a three-hour bus ride to the University at Buffalo.
While they didn’t end up on Gilligan’s Island, the Golden Flashes were stranded in a ghost town after several feet of snow hit western New York.
The game was originally scheduled for Wednesday night. It was initially moved Friday afternoon and then was officially cancelled Thursday night.
Stuck in it all was Poland High graduate Colin Reardon, Kent State’s starting quarterback,. The redshirt sophomore shared his tales of the team’s fateful trip.
During the drive up Tuesday morning, roads were beginning to close, forcing the team to re-route through Rochester. Along the way, one of the team buses got a flat tire, forcing the team to cram into the remaining buses.
That was the first sign that this wasn’t going to be a normal road trip.
“It was kind of funny seeing all these big guys sharing seats and crammed in,” Reardon said. “But it took nine hours to get there, which wasn’t all that fun.”
Upon arrival, there wasn’t much snow on the ground, maybe six to seven inches, according to Reardon. But that’s when the blizzard hit.
“It started snowing really bad,” he said. “It was snowing sideways, and then it was raining, and there was a crazy lightning storm.
“It was pretty wild. I hadn’t seen anything like it before.”
While the Mid-American Conference was figuring out a game plan, the Golden Flashes played a few games of their own to entertain themselves.
First there was team movie night. Then the offensive coaches organized a scavenger hunt around the hotel. At one point, the hunt required jumping into a pool for a clue — it was an indoor pool, thankfully.
Eventually, a few of the players created their own form of karaoke using the pianos in the hotel lobby.
“We were all just kind of sitting there and there were like three pianos,” Reardon said. “I didn’t even know a few of [my teammates] could play.
“One of the freshman starting singing along with it. It pretty funny.”
While there were no life-saving rescues needed since the worst of the weather hit a few miles from where the team was staying, it was a road trip Reardon and his teammates won’t soon forget.
“Everything was closed other than a CVS and one food place,” he said. “We only saw like 10 to 15 people walking around when we went outside to get some fresh air.
“It was like a ghost town.”
The Golden Flashes plan to make the return trip to Kent — without having set foot on a football field — this morning.
“At the very least, we got a free vacation for three days that got you out of class,” Reardon said, laughing.