Avon team bus breaks down on way to softball sectional. 'I was freaking out a little bit.'

It's about the journey not the destination, right? Well, sometimes that journey involves the bus breaking down about 25 miles from the physical destination, leaving you and your team stranded on the side of the road with first pitch quickly approaching.

That, in a nutshell, was Avon softball's literal journey to Terre Haute North on Tuesday and a 7-1 win over Plainfield in the Class 4A Sectional 12 semifinal.

"I was freaking out a little bit," coach Kiah Ferrell laughed.

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Ferrell was going through some mental game stuff with a couple coaches in the back of the bus when one of the players complained her seat was getting "really, really hot." That's weird, the first-year coach thought to herself, but it was really hot outside and the AC wasn't at peak performance. The player was probably just being overly dramatic.

But then a couple coaches up front noticed the bus was slowing down — like, 20-30 miles per hour — but the RPMs were still going up.

… And then some alarms on the dashboard started going off.

… And then they started to see smoke on the back of the bus.

"So we evacuated," Ferrell said.

The Orioles were a little over halfway into their 60-mile journey by this point and found themselves stranded near Reelsville, an unincorporated community in Putnam County southwest of Greencastle along Route 40.

It's obviously not everyday you see an entire softball team hanging out on the side of the road, and a number of people stopped on their way through, including a firefighter, a sheriff, a couple locals who lived around the corner — they offered to open up the church so the girls could use the restroom — a few Plainfield fans and a gentleman with coupons for free pizza. "Then I'm like, we have to be useful with our time," Ferrell laughed. "So I had the girls grab the armbands and start warming up on the trees."

It was quite the spectacle.

"Of course it's on the way to sectionals and of course we're playing Plainfield tonight," said Ferrell, who's an assistant girls basketball coach at Plainfield. "It's already a big enough game for me. But you know what? The girls were in great spirits… Maybe that was actually what we needed, a stress relief to take our mind off of things. I think it loosened them up a bit."

While the girls were joking around and having fun with the whole ordeal, a panicked Ferrell was working on finding a new ride. "I got a lot of steps in during that time," she quipped. A replacement bus from Avon would take too long, so Ferrell called the father of a South Putnam player she used to coach in travel ball. He got her in touch with the South Putnam AD, who contacted the transportation department and about 20 minutes later, Avon had itself a new bus.

"It was perfect," Ferrell said, estimating the were delayed about 45 minutes total.

A player's parent helped transport equipment, the team loaded onto the SP bus and the girls immediately began playing music on the Bluetooth speaker and singing along.

Avon arrived at the field with time to spare and, thanks to a lengthy seventh inning between Brownsburg and Terre Haute North, the players were able to get in a full warmup in the grass on the varsity baseball field.

As for the game itself, Emma Stopperich and Karly Anderson both hit RBI doubles to break a 1-1 tie in the fourth, Hannah Sutton homered in the fifth, then Sutton and Lilly Heath tacked on three more insurance runs in the sixth.

It should be known Avon's bus driver was "adamant" about not missing the game, so they got him a new bus and he was able to drive the team back from Terre Haute.

"It showed a lot about handling adversity," Ferrell said of Tuesday's unexpected adventure. "And honestly, I think the biggest takeaway was how it freed our minds. It was a good mental break for us; a stress relief."

Avon will play host Terre Haute North in the sectional championship game 6 p.m., tonight.

Follow Brian Haenchen on Twitter at @Brian_Haenchen.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Avon team bus breaks down on way to Terre Haute for softball sectional