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Fred's Blog

A tough call

Posted by: Fred Kroner

Saturday, January 17, 2009 12:18 AM

There doesn't seem to be a consensus among area schools as to how to handle regularly scheduled games when school is not in session due to poor weather.

Some districts have a blanket rule that if school is postponed, no extracurricular activities can take place.

In The News-Gazette area, boys' games involving 14 area teams were played on Friday and games involving 13 other area teams were postponed on Friday.

I understand the theory in not allowing games to take place when school is canceled. Often during the winter, it's a no-brainer anyway. We're usually looking at a snowstorm which reduces visibility and makes travel hazardous or icy conditions, which can make movement even more treacherous.

What we've dealt with this week were bitterly cold temperatures. Thursday's athletic cancelations were easier to accept than Friday's because the temperatures had plummeted throughout the day on Thursday and weren't improving by nightfall.

A day later, however, the situation had improved by day's end. There's no dispute about the call to not have school at most locations because of the early-morning air temperatures, but as the day progressed and the situation improved, it's too bad not more schools had the option to go ahead with their evening games.

We're getting down to the final weeks in the regular season. For girls, there are three weeks to go before regionals start. Thus, not a lot of time to schedule makeups. Some non-conference games probably will not be made up.

It was nice to see that we had several girl-boy doubleheaders on Friday as schools that did play tried to make progress in their rescheduling. All three girls' games that preceded boys games were ones which had been postponed the previous day.