Threatening forecasts for Friday night games most likely cause for changes
By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
A series of rescheduled football games and some other outdoor high school sports earlier this season led to questions about what goes into decisions regarding schedule adjustments.
Quite a bit, according to athletics directors at some Alamance County schools.
“There’s not a perfect science to it,” Southern Alamance athletics director Stephanie Smith said. “I think every school handles it differently and you have your patterns.”
Football games were shifted to Thursday nights in a few cases because of concerning forecasts for scheduled Friday night games. Southern played its opener a night later than scheduled on a Saturday at Eastern Randolph.
Some football teams had altered set-ups for each of their first three games, including lengthy delays on Friday nights.
“The weather was not our friend,” Williams athletics director Bob Grant said.
The preference is to keep the games on the scheduled dates. Moving game nights or times can be complicated.
“There’s a lot of moving parts that people don’t see,” Grant said.
Much of this relates to field availability. Stadiums are used for boys’ soccer and, more recently, girls’ flag football during the fall season. There is also junior varsity football plus, in some cases, middle school football using high school fields.
“It’s a guessing game,” Southeast Alamance athletics director B.J. Condron said. “You look at the beginning of the week. It’s keeping an eye on the forecast. You have to kind of make those decisions by Tuesday (for Friday football).”
That’s because moving a varsity game to Thursday night means shifting junior varsity off that night. Those switches are bound to impact varsity soccer and middle school football.
Even for fall sports, Condron said he frequently checks with baseball coach Adam Gunn because baseball coaches are prone to monitor hour-by-hour forecasts when their teams are in season. As a former girls’ basketball coach, Condron said he was apt to be mostly concerned with snowstorms rather than the blow-by-blow forecasts in the fall and spring.
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Home teams are basically in charge of making the decisions.
“They say the home team dictates it,” Grant said. “I try to communicate with the other schools.”
Smith said mid-August communication with Eastern Randolph made the decision regarding the football game a smooth switch. “We had a plan in place the whole time,” she said.
So when do we play?
Todd Davis, athletics director for the Alamance-Burlington School System and formerly the AD at Williams, said generally conference games are supposed to be made up on the first available date after a postponement.
There’s also the assignment of game officials. Having officials available – or at least originally assigned crews – can be challenging when game dates move. Some officials have assignments for other games on potential new dates.
“If you’re not careful, you don’t have officials,” Smith said.
There’s also the matter of staffing concession stands. Yet the newest biggest factor involves security, with ABSS using metal detectors and enhanced security at entrances.
So having that personnel available and in place becomes part of the equation. That was particularly a concern on the Friday prior to Labor Day weekend, some athletics directors said.
“The addition of security is a factor you have to consider,” Grant said.
Keeping fields in good condition is something athletics directors care about. In some cases, decisions are made in an effort to preserve the fields for several months of activities.
“Especially early in the year,” Davis said, “when you have to get a season’s worth of play out of your field.”
Smith said football coaches might see benefits of playing in the rain – or avoiding those situations. Even that’s fluid.
“That could change week to week depending on the opponent,” Smith said.
If a football change is necessitated, Smith said she prefers moving to Thursday with next option Monday. She said Saturday dates need to be mutually agreed upon between the schools.
The benefit of playing Thursday opposed to Monday is preferred because “the kids don’t get the rest and recovery when they play on Monday,” Smith said in reference to the next game on the following Friday.
For sports such as soccer, Condron said some decisions are predicated on the quest “just to make sure you can get all the games in” by the end of the regular season.
Smart move or not?
Southeast had an unexpected development in its Week 2 football game vs. Seaforth. The game was delayed because of lightning and then the competition ran late, in part because of a spectator medical issue causing a pause.
Late in the game, the lights went out. They were on a timer. Lights were quickly restored.
Condron said there’s an informal “weather scoreboard” at Southeast with coaches and administrators keeping a tally of good moves and other times when a new game date might have been a wise decision.
“Sometimes you have moved a game and the bottom falls out and you’re thinking ‘great decision,’” Condron said. “Other times it might be beautiful by game time and you’re all sitting at home.”
There’s also the matter of checking to see what other schools in the region might be doing on particular nights. Once one or two games have new dates, other schools might be inclined to follow.
“I think there’s some bandwagon to it,” Condron said, noting it doesn’t always work out. “We’ll be idiots together or be geniuses together.”
Other recent sports highlights:
• Williams Athletics Hall of Fame names second class of inductees: https://alamancenews.com/williams-high-school-selects-second-class-for-athletics-hall-of-fame/
• Western’s new football coach making an impact on and off the field: https://alamancenews.com/hambright-puts-early-stamp-on-role-as-westerns-first-year-head-coach/
• Southeast only county team still undefeated, after win at Williams: https://alamancenews.com/southeast-builds-big-lead-lets-defense-finish-off-williams-continues-undefeated-season/
