Snow tests skill of athletic directors

While athletics cancellations go with the territory — or frozen tundra, as the case may be — at this time of year, wreaking havoc on schedules, there are some events that add a whole ?nother level of chaos. Beginning with the weekend?s snowstorm and into this week?s potentially record-setting blizzard, local high school athletic directors have their hands full cancelling, postponing and trying to reschedule games.
?Everybody kind of rolls with it,” Lynn Classical AD Bill Devin said. “A lot of us, I think, started working on some of this (Sunday). You watch the news and weather reports and talk with your coaches and referee assignors for different sports. The hardest part is trying to find an open day that works.”
Some schools, like Peabody High, were proactive and moved some games up to try to get them in ahead of the snow. But many school superintendents cancelled all after-school activities, leaving teams scrambling to find new dates to play.
?We?ve all been through this before,” Peabody High AD Phil Sheridan said. “And it?s all about the safety of the people involved.”
Marblehead High AD Mark Tarmey has to add in at least one additional factor when trying to find open dates to make up games. In most cases, Marblehead?s teams have to rely on buses coming from other communities to get to away games.
The logistics of putting all that together, along with finding time to make up games at various venues,can test the mettle of even the best of ADs. But Tarmey knows it comes with the territory during winter in New England.
?It?s chaotic, yes. But also there?s not a lot you can do about it,” Tarmey said. “One of the good things about the ADs in the Northeastern Conference is that we all have the best interests of the kids in mind. We work together really well to try and find solutions and that?s what will happen here.”
Another factor that plays into trying to get postponed games made up is that the cutoff to have games played is different for some sports like gymnastics, swimming and track than it is for other sports, such as basketball and hockey.
Many of those sports are held at venues that are not on the high school campus or are not a school department facility. In those cases, trying to rearrange schedules and times to fit games in can be quite an adventure.
?You can?t just drop a game into some places,” Sheridan said. “For us, we can kind of juggle some things around with wrestling, gymnastics and track to fit a basketball game in.”
One thing one which most athletic directors do agree, though, is that despite what seems like chaos to outsiders, everything seems to always work out — given time.?You just have to roll with the punches,” Devin said. “Certainly, you don?t want to have some teams playing three nights in a row. We did that with our boys? basketball team last week and you could see that they were tired by the end. That?s really not what you want to have happen.”