With a new basketball season on the horizon, Outside the Huddle takes a look at one of the most important pieces: the travel.
Winning on the road can be hard, whether you are in the SAC or NECC or anywhere between. Teams who can win at home are great, teams that can win on the road consistently are almost mythical sometimes. With multiple games in a week, long stretches without a game in your home gym, how do some teams deal with the pressures of being road warriors during the long winter months of high school basketball season.
Here are the 5 area teams who will log the most miles to travel and play this season.
Note: This includes all games that are currently scheduled, including tournaments. Multiple day tournaments or shootouts that are clearly within driving distance (i.e. Carroll girls at the DeKalb Tournament) are credited as two trips. NECC Tournament first round games are included, but ACAC Tournament games are not since that draw has not taken place yet.
1. Bishop Luers
The Knights go on the road for the most total miles of any boys team with 557.9, though their average trip of 42.92 ranks fourth.
2. Canterbury
The Cavaliers will travel 556.4 miles this season, second most total, but their average trip doesn’t even reach 40 miles at 39.74.
3. Warsaw
The Tigers will travel 525.6 miles total with an average of 47.78 per trip, which the highest average trip length in the area.
4. Wayne
The Generals have the second longest average trip at 43.16 and will be the last of four area teams traveling over 400 miles with 431.6 total miles traveled.
5. Prairie Heights
While the Panthers rank 7th overall in total miles with 472.2, they actually have the third highest average trip mileage at 42.93.
THE BIG TRIPS OF NOTE
Bishop Luers will wrap up their regular season with a demanding finish: five straight road games. It’s a late-season gauntlet that will force the Knights to find momentum in enemy territory when it matters most.
Adams Central’s schedule is built around short-range road swings, but even those require crossing state lines. Their quickest non-conference trip is 17.7 miles to Parkway, Ohio, barely edging their in-state treks of 17.4 miles to Heritage and 7.7 miles to county rival South Adams. Efficiency is the name of the game—but the Flying Jets will still log plenty of Midwestern miles.
Angola lives a different reality entirely. Competing in the sprawling NECC while also scheduling Michigan opponents means the Hornets are used to distance. Their longest haul this season: a 71.6-mile trip to Bellmont.
Northrop opens the season living out of a duffel bag, with three straight road games and five of their first six away from home. But the payoff comes later. After January 16, the Bruins settle in for seven home games against just three road trips—a dramatic shift that could fuel a strong late push.
Woodlan continues to stretch its map far beyond the ACAC footprint. Their in-conference journey to Jay County (55.3 miles) isn’t even their longest grind, sitting behind even tougher trips to Fremont (58.4) and Prairie Heights (57.2). The Warriors will spend plenty of time watching the miles tick upward.
Huntington North faces a similarly tough beginning as the likes of Northrop, opening with three games on the road and playing five of their first six away. It’s a trial by fire for a program that knows momentum in November can set the tone for everything that follows.
For Eastside, the shortest ride of the season still crosses state lines—an 8.2-mile zip across the border to Edgerton, Ohio.
No team experiences extremes quite like New Haven. Their two shortest trips are paired with their two longest. Early in the season, a modest 6.3-mile hop to Snider follows a massive 96.9-mile tournament trip to Kokomo to face South Bend Riley. Then late in the winter, an 8.7-mile trip to Heritage precedes a stunning 112-mile drive to Noblesville the very next day. With only two road games in 2025, the Bulldogs will suddenly hit the highway eight times between January 16 and February 26.
Southern Wells starts the year with three straight road games—the only time all season they’ll face consecutive trips unless the ACAC Tournament brackets them away from home. Otherwise, the Raiders’ schedule is spread out just enough to avoid extended road fatigue.
Bellmont’s boys take 10 road trips overall, but six of those come in a grueling seven-game stretch between December 19 and January 24, including a tournament at Delta. In that entire span of over a month, their only home game is January 16 against Norwell. Outside of that window, Bellmont avoids back-to-back road games entirely.
Nobody, however, spends more time away than the Canterbury Cavaliers. They will take 14 road trips—15 road games in total thanks to the Culver Academy Tournament—while playing just seven times at home. From their December 2 opener at Bishop Luers through January 31, the Cavs play 13 road games and only three at home. Between December 13 and January 13 alone, they’ll live through seven straight away. No boys or girls team in the area faces a heavier travel burden.
South Side’s schedule offers its own unique twist: of their 12 total road trips, half are just 8.4 miles or less. They’ll spend plenty of time in familiar surroundings, even when they’re technically the visitors.
And then there’s Wayne—the true mileage kings. The Generals will make back-to-back 101-mile trips on January 2 (to a Fishers Tournament) and January 10 (to Toledo Bowsher, Ohio), with a home game against North Side wedged in between. That doesn’t even include their longest trek: 112 miles to Lawrence Central on February 21. Add in their regular-season finale at Anderson, and Wayne will cover 399.3 miles on those four trips alone—an astonishing 77 percent of their total travel this season.
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