More snow provides more headaches for local ADs

Mother Nature has thrown a major wrinkle into the lives of athletic directors all over the region in the last 10 days as two major snowstorms have dumped more than three feet of snow on the area.
The snow and the school closings that have resulted have turned the long winter season into a race against the calendar now for most teams. All of that has given local ADs more than a few headaches.
?It’s crazy,” said Lynn Classical?s Bill Devin on Monday after his Rams had more games postponed. “Now it really becomes like a jigsaw puzzle. And not one of those 500-piece puzzles. It’s more like a 1,000-piece one now.”
One of the problems that ADs now face are the different deadlines for teams and individual participants to qualify for sectional or state tournaments.
?We’re really up against it now,” said Lynn English?s Gary Molea. “Some of these teams that we are going against need these games to get into the tournament. So we’re going to do what we need to in order to get (the games) in.”
Both Devin and Molea cited the example of the Lynn Jets hockey team, which was scheduled to face Salem Monday night at Salem State’s Rockett Arena in a makeup of a game that was postponed in the blizzard that hit the area last week.
For both teams, the game is critical because the winner would clinch second place in the Northeastern Conference/South standings and with it an automatic berth in the Division 3 North tournament. But with Salem State hosting seven high school teams and two college teams, finding another date to play is now even more challenging.
?The hard part really is the hockey stuff because of availability of ice,” Molea said. “Even in basketball, you hate to have to play three games in a row but that’s probably what were going to have to do.”
The NEC is also slated to hold its swimming championships today and tomorrow at Salem State. But even that is up in the air as some participants will have to make a choice tomorrow with the North diving sectionals also scheduled for Wednesday.
?Those are some of the dilemmas that we have right now and that makes it tough,” Devin said.
Another factor that comes into play is the ability of teams to be able to have a chance to practice before a game. For some schools in the NEC, they were closed for three or four days last week and didn’t get a chance to get workouts in before playing games.
?In the past, it?s usually been a day here or there and this winter, we started out spoiled,” Devin said. “We were cruising along and then all of a sudden we get hammered with this.”
The weather forecast is supposed to be better as the week goes along so both Devin and Molea are hopeful their teams will be able to get back into a normal routine.
?As bad as it seems right now, things will fall into place and we will finish the schedule,” Devin said.