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Weather factors into whether games are played
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Basketball fans enter the Canfield High School gym to watch Wednesday’s game between the Cardinal boys and Howland. The recent cold snap has caused numerous school across the Valley to close and cancel many of their sporting and club events.
Oh the weather outside is frightful
But this game is so impactful.
Well since we’ve got no gym to go,
I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!
OK, so maybe that’s not what most athletic directors have been singing to themselves as they’ve watched the snow — and temperature — fall this winter sports season.
But that doesn’t mean the weather hasn’t been a real burden on the high school basketball schedule, as well as other winter sports.
Greg Cooper has been Canfield’s athletic director since 2006 and in the past eight years, he can only remember one other instance where the weather has had this much impact on the athletics schedule.
“It was about three years ago,” Cooper recalled. “I just remember we had a really wet spring that year. It seemed like it rained every other day effecting either baseball or softball.
“You become a junior meteorologist almost trying to predict the weather,” he joked. “That’s the closest comparison to the widespread make-ups we’ve had this winter since I’ve been at Canfield.”
The Ohio High School Athletic Association is the governing body for all of it’s member schools. It has a lengthy list of rules and guidelines that each school must adhere to, however left out are specific directions on how to deal with weather.
That, according to Cooper, is at the discretion of the schools administrations.
“They allow the member schools some latitude to determine whether or not they can safely conduct games or practices,” Cooper said. “This varies from school district to school district, but there is a fare amount of leeway given.”
Austintown Fitch, Canfield, Girard and Lakeview — among others — are members of the American Athletic Conference. The AAC has some general guidelines on cancellations pertaining to conference make-up games, but ultimately it comes down to the two schools that are scheduled to play, according to Cooper.
The Lakeview girls basketball team is in the midst of a perfect season and their head coach, Adam Lewis, doesn’t want anything interrupting the Bulldogs’ routine — especially the weather.
So far, it hasn’t.
“We’ve kind of dodged a bullet and haven’t missed any games because of weather or anything like that,” Lewis said. “I thought the Howland game was going to get rescheduled [on Monday], but we were able to get it in and I’m happy we did.”
His Bulldogs were victorious 69-46 to improve to 16-0 on the season. On Tuesday, with most area schools closed due to below freezing temperatures, Lewis decided to cancel practice.
“We would never have our kids come out [for practice] if that were to put them in harm in any way,” he said. “The team’s playing well, our seniors are really taking leadership of this team, so we’re just going to keep going along.”
Cooper said the decision making process to play a game or hold a practice isn’t as easy as whether or not the kids were in school that day. He explained how the circumstances might be different in the evening as opposed to when school officials had to make a decision for classes that morning or the night before.
“The best example is if it’s bitter cold out in the morning, the school system has to look into transportation of the kids and avoid putting them at risk by having them walk to school or waiting outside for the bus,” said Cooper. “If the snow or the cold are severe enough, they may call for a two-hour delay or cancellation.
“Then during the day, the snow plow might get out and the temperature might rise, and now you could have practice or hold an athletic event.”
That’s a scenario Girard’s boys basketball team knows all too well this season. They’ve had two games cancelled and rescheduled already this season, only to have one of them cancelled again. Having to reschedule games farther down the road has left the Indians with a difficult stretch at the end of their season.
“I was just looking at this with my assistants,” Girard coach Craig Hannon said. “We play five games in seven days before the district tournament. I mean it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find times to reschedule these games.”
The Indians’ game against Brookfield was originally slated for Tuesday and then pushed back 24 hours to Wednesday. With the temperatures not appearing to rise any time soon, they had to call off Wednesday’s make-up date too.
“It stinks missing games, though, because you get out of that rhythm of playing on Tuesday and Friday,” Hannon said. “When you’re playing well you just want to get out and play the next game. Plus the kids want to play games. They don’t want to practice five days in a row, I mean they get bored.”
Rescheduling conference games is the first priority for all athletic directors. If on the day of a scheduled game neither participating team has school, the ADs will call each other and discuss other options, according to Cooper.
“The host school’s primary concern is having everything in place to put on an event that night, whereas the traveling school has to worry about transportation and all that,” Cooper said. “Then, if the agreement is made not to play, your next breath is used to look at the schedule and try and find a day when you can play it.”
For Austintown Fitch coach Brian Beany, those solutions haven’t always turned out to be the most favorable. His Falcons have already had to play back-to-back games on Friday and Saturday once this season and with Tuesday’s game against Niles moved to Saturday, they’ll be at it again this weekend. Fitch will host Poland on Friday before traveling to Niles for two important conference games in as many days.
“That’s twice now we’ve had to go back-to-back, but I’m sure everybody’s dealing with the same thing,” Beany said. “Now that we play a 22-game schedule, obviously your opportunities to find open slots gets more difficult.
“It might not be the best situation for both teams, but you gotta do what you gotta do to get these conference games in.”
The window is slowly dying,
And my team we’re still trying.
But as long as it’s still allowed
Play It Now! Play It Now! Play It Now!