Even in Chicago the LSU soccer team felt the effects of Hurricane Gustav. The same storm that ravaged southeast Louisiana canceled flights across the region and turned the Tigers’ first road trip into a multi-stop travel marathon.Complications caused by Gustav canceled two different flights into New Orleans and forced the team to find an unorthodox route home, said LSU sports information director Will Stafford.”Instead of flying into New Orleans on Wednesday, we separated into two groups and flew out of Chicago to Dallas and then on to Jackson, Miss.,” Stafford said. “[From Jackson] a bus picked us up and drove us back to Baton Rouge.”The change in plans extended the trip an extra day, and the extra flights and driving added another 10 hours from the original non-stop flight to New Orleans. If they had not had enough of Gustav by then, the Tigers finished the excursion with a stop for grocery essentials just outside of a blacked-out Baton Rouge area.”Getting there and coming home probably took 15 hours each,” said junior midfielder Michelle Makasini. “We were stuck in the middle of Chicago with [Gustav] on every channel.”The circumstances surrounding the trip home overshadowed what was an otherwise impressive performance. The Tigers started the Lakeside Invitational Tournament on Aug. 30 with a 2-0 win against Northwestern before slipping past Loyola-Chicago, 2-1, on Sunday. Senior captains Roslyn Jones and Casey Crawford were named to the All-Tournament team along with junior Malorie Rutledge and freshman Mo Isom. Isom was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player with nine saves, one clean sheet and one goal allowed.”It’s hard to keep an eye on the goal in a situation like that,” said junior midfielder Veronica Godbolt. “But it speaks to our team’s maturity that all we needed to focus on were those 90 minutes, and then we could go back to worrying about our family and friends.”The week-long interruption of Gustav also put a damper on a historic moment for the LSU program. With a 4-0 record and 4-1 dismantling of BYU, the Tigers climbed to No. 19 in both the Soccer Times Top 25 and the Soccer Buzz Top 30 last week. The team also attained a No. 17 ranking in the Soccer America Top 25 poll — its highest ranking ever. LSU is also currently the highest-ranked team in the Southeastern Conference.”We were kind of bummed about [the storm],” said junior    forward Amanda Carreno. “We were really excited about our ranking, but then we heard people would not have power for weeks and weeks.”With the campus as damaged as it is, LSU decided to cancel last weekend’s home games against Kent State and Dartmouth.”I’m not from Louisiana myself, but there are girls on this team that lost everything in Katrina,” Godbolt said. “It’s a better situation as long as people are safe.”The Tigers will resume play at home Friday at 7 p.m. against Louisiana-Lafayette.—-Contact David Helman at [email protected]