OK, I understand when high school kids are involved, sometimes you have to take a stand and cancel after school activities because of upcoming weather.
Last night, all the games in our area were canned because of freezing rain that was supposed to hit. I never saw any report that said it was basically going to stop everything, rather just a threat of freezing rain. Not even an inch or something of ice.
Then, it was supposed to change over to rain as the weather warmed up.
High schools around here canceled everything. EVERYTHING. Not one game on a rather large datebook was played. And most were moved to tonight, so we’ll have to deal with nearly 40 high school events this evening.
The bad part of this whole situation is that this ice never came. In fact, it didn’t even start raining here until after midnight. Now, the rain they called for did come. There is A LOT of rain as it came down hard all night and into this morning. I haven’t seen rivers or anything yet, but it was pretty steady for a long period of time.
Tonight, all this rain could turn to snow (they aren’t calling for more than an inch), but worse than that is the fact that the tempurature is supposed to drop some and you would think it could create some slippery roads with all the rain that had falen.
So when does it stop?
I know that we as a society have to protect these high school kids. They have to be guarded against and no unnecessary risks should be taken when their lives are on the line. However, if you cancel eveything before a spot of precipitation even hits the ground, you need to be sure that everything they are calling for will come.
These decisions don’t just mess up high school schedules.
Parents, newspapers, future opponents — all of this is affected by these decisions. Take our paper for instance. We had scheduled last night four people to work. It was a sizeable datebook, so we were prepared. However, tonight’s originally was only like 12-15 games. Now, it’s more than doubled and we have three of us working, which doesn’t include our main layout guy. So things could get kind of nuts.
And what’s worse? The weather tonight will be worse than last night. Do you cancel things tonight, too? I mean, it could be slippery out or a dusting of snow. In reality, that would be way worse than last night’s dry roads.
I understand where the schools are coming from. The safety of the students is the first priority. However, if you think you are never going to have to travel with bad weather in upstate New York, you better cancel winter sports. And fall sports, for that matter, if your school is any good at fall sports and could advance into the state tournament.
Trust your drivers. Trust your instincts. But for goodness sake, if you’re going to can events, make sure there’s a reason. I’ve traveled in far worse conditions to cover a game than last night. I’m sorry, the threat wasn’t that great to can everything.
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