Bad weather forces quick decisions from athletic directors
By Michael Ashford
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
When winter weather hits, it affects more than the drivers out on the roads or the students who get a day or two off from school.
There is a small group of people who constantly have their eyes to the skies, because the decisions they make based on the weather can have wide and far-reaching consequences.
Most often, the decision to cancel or postpone athletic events because of winter weather falls on the shoulders of the athletic directors at the local and area schools, which can create some serious pressure.
“This is where we actually start doing our jobs,” Emporia High Athletic Director Britton Hart joked Tuesday before the ice and freezing rain hit Emporia and almost the entire rest of the state.
With the safety of the student-athletes the No. 1 concern, Hart and Emporia State AD Kent Weiser each said there was no set policy on how or when to make a cancellation or postponement, just that they know a dangerous situation when they see one.
“It’s a policy of safety and common sense,” Weiser said. “You try to use it as a last resort, a cancellation or a postponement, because then you get off schedule, and people expect games to be when they’re scheduled. But if we have any doubt or get advised from highway patrol, we’ll check road conditions and see what their suggestions are, and if it’s to the point where they don’t recommend any kind of travel, then we don’t take a chance with it.”
As of 6 p.m. Monday night, the area already had been littered with cancellations and postponements of sporting events, mostly at the high school level.
Emporia High’s swimming and diving competition that was planned for Monday and today was moved to Jan. 3, and Hart said several basketball games out of town also were delayed because of the expected icy conditions.
Many school districts around the area canceled classes for today, meaning area high school basketball action also was postponed.
It’s a tough thing to call, Hart said, simply because of how quickly the situation can change, especially during the winter months.
“It’s kind of a fluid process, but it’s always based on safety and the need,” Hart said. “It’s always worse because ice and snow is so unpredictable and it changes so quickly with the temperature and the conditions of the roads. In the spring, you’ve got rain-outs, and people are mad ’cause they came for the game and it only rained a half inch. It’s a lot more serious in the winter and a lot more testy just because of the sheer magnitude of what you’re dealing with. It gets so cold so quickly and the conditions change so fast that you kind of have to be more cautious than what you are in the spring.”
Though no Emporia State athletic events this week are expected to be affected by the recent bad weather — Emporia State does not schedule athletic events during finals week, Weiser said — one only has to go back less than a year ago during basketball season to see how the weather can affect ESU scheduling.
On Jan. 13, the ESU men’s and women’s basketball teams were scheduled to play host to Central Missouri at White Auditorium. The Emporia area received several inches of snow in the days preceding the game, but road conditions were OK on the Saturday that the game was to be played. But the same could not be said for the Warrensburg, Mo., area, which is where Central Missouri is located.
The games had to be postponed because Central Missouri was stuck at home, forcing Weiser to come up with another date that not only worked for his coaches and players, but also for White Auditorium — which is in routine use for events other than basketball — and with Central Missouri.
“You’ve got to pick a date where it (White Auditorium) is available, you’ve got to pick a date that’s somewhat fair to the teams participating as far as having a day off in between games, you’ve got to make sure officials can get here,” he said. “There’s a lot of things you have to consider.”
Weiser said with as much time as he spends keeping tabs on the weather, he often felt like he was in a different line of work — meteorology.
“We’ve always got one eye on the radar screen to see what’s coming in or where your teams are at if you’re on the road,” he said. “It’s certainly something we pay a lot of attention to.”
But no matter what, both Hart and Weiser agreed that taking chances with winter weather was not an option.
“We always take the utmost caution to make sure we’re doing what’s right,” Hart said. “We do whatever’s necessary to make a good decision.”