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StumbleuponMiami coach, wife get dose of reality TV life
Casey, Rachel Lubahn only married couple on Golf Channel's 'Big Break X: Michigan.'
Sunday, September 28, 2008
OXFORD — Once Casey and Rachel Lubahn began competing as a team on the Golf Channel's reality show, "Big Break X: Michigan," they found themselves in a sort of Alice in Wonderland unreality.
Gone were the normal routines of life and expectations of privacy. About the only thing they could rely on were each other, as the show's only married couple. And all they could expect was that at any given moment, something unexpected could pop up.
"You compete in different challenges they set up," Rachel said. "In some, you can gain immunity. In some, you're fighting to stay on the show. You can be eliminated on the spot."
"You can sit there for two hours," Casey said, "and then have to hit the biggest shot of your life. At that moment."
Naturally Casey, the new men's golf coach at Miami University, and Rachel are not allowed to give away the ending to this chapter of their lives, nor be too specific about what happened on any of the challenges. They might have been the first of the eight teams to be eliminated. Or they might have emerged as the victors. We'll know when the final episode airs, which according to Casey is Dec. 16.
But Casey and Rachel did provide a sense of what life is like in reality TV.
"There is a lot of drama," Casey said. "They're filming everything you do, everything you say, which gets interesting at times."
"The microphone is so little," Rachel said. "You don't notice and you have to catch yourselves sometimes ... The scary part of the show is that they're filming you and you don't know they're filming you."
If Casey and Rachel could keep little hidden while the cameras were rolling and the microphones catching every sound, and they were rarely turned off, the show's schedule of events remained extremely hidden from the contestants.
"It's sort of like the CIA," Casey said. "Everything is a secret. They don't tell you what you'll be doing, even an hour before."
Also, the contestants were permitted little contact with the outside world during the two weeks of filming.
"They took away our phones, camera, computer, PDAs, any electronic device that would record or transmit," Rachel pointed out. "You have no sense of time, no sense of what day it is. You just wait for someone to come tell you what to do."
They were permitted some communication, but even that was strictly monitored.
"They look over your shoulder if you're writing an e-mail," Rachel said.
Casey and Rachel met in 2003 as student-athletes at Michigan State University, where both played golf. They married in August of 2007 and last month Casey was named as Miami's golf coach. They bought a house in Oxford a few weeks ago.
"When we agreed to move here, I'd never been to the town," Rachel said. "One afternoon I came here and drove around town about eight times. I really like it."
"It's all been a blur," Casey said.
They auditioned for "Big Break X: Michigan" after a friend, a Michigan State assistant coach who had been on the show in two previous seasons, suggested they go for it.
There were, according to Rachel, more than 5,000 applicants.
"We went on a 24-hour driving spree," she said, "from Michigan to Atlanta. We took a nap in a parking lot, got ready in a grocery store bathroom and then went to the audition.
"We hit five shots each," she added. "That was it."
Both Casey and Rachel agreed that this was a life-changing experience.
"After going through it," Rachel said, "we feel more prepared to go through anything from here on out."
"Not only in golf," Casey said, "but in life."
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2197 or pconrad@coxohio.com.
