With Chatham County Schools operating on a “Monday-a-week” student schedule for the two weeks of Feb. 16-20 and Feb. 23-27 due to continuous inclement weather, spring sports have fallen behind schedule.
While some students may have enjoyed the extra personal time, these school cancellations have created some issues for spring sports, which were scheduled to have games this week. Women’s soccer was slated to have three games this week, but doesn’t even have a team, having only held one day of tryouts.
“There were 50 girls trying out this year, and [the coach] needed more time than one tryout to figure out who was varsity material, so with games scheduled for this week it was a little crazy to think about,” senior Kellsie Weiss said.
Soccer is not alone with all other spring sports either mid try-out or, at best, one practice into the season.
“Spring sports’ schedules get changed around every year due to bad weather, so it’s not an unfamiliar problem,” said athletic director Jason Amy.
In response to the lack of preparation time the spring sports teams have received, Amy and other local athletic directors have cancelled or pushed games back until at least this Friday, some until next week.
The inclement weather was consistent throughout a large portion of North Carolina, so most other schools have been easy to work with through the cancellations and rescheduling of games.
“Everyone is in pretty much the same predicament; some are in even worse shape than us,” Amy said. “There hasn’t been any issue with another team wanting to play when we’re not ready.”
“A glorified practice with a winner and a loser” is how baseball coach Rick Parks describes what any games would be like this week for his team.
“I’m just cancelling games. We want to put out a solid product, so we’re going to just keep practicing until we’re at that point,” Parks said. “This is my 10th year coaching and, weather-wise, this is by far the worst it’s ever been.”
– By John Dunning