Minnesota high school to play winnipeg schools has trouble at the border

I wonder who is more tired right about now: Eden Prairie’s players, Eden Prairie’s coaches, the players and coaches of the teams who actually played football games tonight or me?
Here’s calling it a toss-up.

From: GameFace MN, High School Sports

Coming to you from room [wouldn’t you like to know] at the Canad Inns Polo Park, located literally a hop, skip and a few jumps from Canad Inns Stadium. That’s the home of the CFL Winnipeg Blue Bombers and – for Friday afternoon, anyway – the Eden Prairie Eagles.
First game is 3 p.m. Friday, against Vincent Massey. Shortly after, Game 2 will begin against Oak Park. I’m told both teams are in Division Three up here in Manitoba. And I have no clue what that means.
It’s been quite the trip so far, to say the least, and we haven’t really even seen any football yet.
In short: Star Tribune ace photojournalist Kyndell Harkness and I started at 5:45 a.m. today in front of our downtown office, showed up at EPHS for the charter bus sendoff, pointed our rented 2009 Nissan Altima toward Canada, took a slight detour through the Canadian Immigration Office (more on that later), chatted for awhile with some dude named Bud Grant and took in an 8:30 p.m. EP walkthrough over on the field before finally calling it a day.
Annnnnd breathe.
EP players were pretty giddy today (I’m told a handful cheered when the bus rolled into Manitoba) and it showed in a rather upbeat practice session tonight.
Originally, the team was supposed to practice at 3:30, but there was a bit of a snag at the beginning of the trip when someone failed to show up on time, causing a delay. The team busses then stopped in Grand Forks for lunch, where coach Mike Grant was able to meet up with son Taylor (a freshman at UND).
Around that same time starts our story of the Canadian Immigration Office.
Any world traveler will tell you customs can be a, um, bear. But you’d think two adults in good standing with the law and in possession of legal, updated passports would have zero problems getting into Canada.
Wrong, wrong and wrong.
We should have seen the writing on the wall from the get-go, when the kid in the border booth (KIBB) took our passports and asked for our reason into Maple Leaf Country.

Me: Business
KIBB: Oh. What do you do?
Me: We’re journalists
KIBB: Oh. What kind of stories are you writing?
Me: About a high school football team coming to Canada to play.
KIBB: Hm. I don’t like football.
Me: Don’t say that. No one will read the stories.
KIBB: I know I won’t. [Pause] OK – You’ll be talking with our Immigration Office today. Please pull ahead to the apron over there and go inside.

Uh-oh.
Seventy minutes later (!!!!) we were back on our way. Seventy. Minutes. We sat. We waited. This would be depressing if not for a woman in a Vikings t-shirt who finally figured us out as Minnesotans. She spoke up, asking if we were with the Eden Prairie group. Turns out, that woman was Mike Grant’s sister. She and her husband had also been asked by KIBB to pull over and walk on in.
Misery loves company, and as her husband awesomely told me “If you need some words for your story, I’ve got a few.”
By the time we were given our passports back by immigration officer 11717 (who offered us a free Canadian flag and edible crayons (I’m not kidding) and told were asked to stop for no reason in particular), two other cars headed to Winnipeg for Eden Prairie’s games were in our situation.
Later, we learned that every adult on the two EPHS busses had similar issues. This caused an even later arrival, which inched into dinnertime, thus the practice under the lights. Which just ended, some 16 ½ hours after we got this party started.
I am so ready to watch football. But first, some sleep.

[url]http://www.startribune.com/sports/preps/102122249.html