From Madrid to Middleton: Sheehan's wild day ends with a win

It was 9 p.m. Friday.

And no one — and we mean no one — deserved a good night of sleep as much as Luke Sheehan.

Sheehan, a senior forward, spent 21 hours traveling from Madrid, Spain back to Middleton for the Cardinals’ WIAA Division 1 regional semifinal against Janesville Craig. Sheehan arrived back at MHS 10 minutes before tipoff, much to the delight of his teammates.

“I was sweating it,” Sheehan said.

Making matters worse was the Cardinals had to sweat out a 65-62 win over the Cougars. When it was over, all Sheehan wanted to do was plop down on his bed.

“The first half I was juiced up,” Sheehan said. “Second half, it was like I got hit by a tank. I was pretty tired. My body felt good, but my head was just like … all that travel got to me.”

With good reason.

Madrid is seven hours ahead of Middleton, so when Sheehan got to MHS at 6:50 p.m. CST, it was really 1:50 a.m. in Spain.

Sheehan and his family were visiting his brother, Owen, who’s attending college in Madrid. But Sheehan and his mother, Heather, left the trip early hoping to make it back before game time.

This was too close for comfort, though.

The trip home started with a flight from Madrid to Lisbon, Portugal. Sheehan said he slept about 30 minutes on that flight.

Then came a nine hour flight from Lisbon to Chicago where Sheehan said he slept a few hours.

After the Sheehan’s landed and grabbed their bags, they raced to the car and started driving home around 4:30 p.m. That gave them 2 ½ hours to navigate Chicago traffic — on a Friday, no less — and make it to MHS by game time.

Sheehan said his mother drives faster than him, but he took the wheel because, “I wanted to stay awake. I didn’t want to come out with dead legs.”

Sheehan joked that he “drove two miles over the speed limit the whole way.” He then arrived at MHS 10 minutes before tipoff.

When Sheehan walked in the gym, his teammates — already excited for playoff basketball — erupted after seeing a player that’s meant so much to their success.

“That was awesome,” senior guard Jackson Guerrero said of Sheehan’s entrance.

Sophomore forward Carter Parks agreed.

“I got really excited, really happy,” Parks said. “We were in layup lines and he just walks through the door and it was a really exciting, really fun moment.”

Sheehan quickly changed, went into the auxiliary gym to get loose, then assistant coach Holden Pratt handed him a sandwich, a banana and some juice to quickly fuel up.

Then, just 4 minutes into the game, Sheehan entered for senior forward Joey Passaglia.

Sheehan’s presence was much-needed against Craig first-team all-Big Eight Conference center Nolan Duffy. And Sheehan, Parks and Passaglia combined to do yeoman’s work on the Cougars’ standout, who finished with 12 points — about half of his average.

Offensively, Sheehan made 3-of-4 shots — including a huge 5-foot jump hook with 3 minutes left that gave Middleton a 63-58 lead — and finished with six points and five re-bounds.

“You saw how much he means to us when he walked in the gym,” Middleton coach Kevin Bavery said. “He gave us a great lift.”

When it was over, though, all Sheehan wanted to put his head on a pillow.

“It was a heck of a day,” Sheehan said.