Severe weather has led to the cancellation of a total of eight sporting events this year, presenting problems with the student athletes’ schedules, studies and sanity.
The weather, ranging from 90 degree heat to pouring rain, has cancelled two races for the cross country team as well as seven games for the field hockey teams. With all of the cancellations and reschedulings that have occurred in the past few weeks, players have had to better manager their time in order to manage the added hurdles in their lives.
“Now we’re having so many games during the week because of all the makeups,” junior and JV field hockey player Julia Slivinski said. “Because of all of the make up games, we’ve had less time to practice [and] less time to work on what we need to fix. It’s making us less prepared.”
Senior and varsity cross country runner Ben Smith said he agreed.
“No one has been able to post many times this year [which] means every race counts, even the muddiest and the hottest ones,” Smith said. “It also means that we don’t know what will happen in the postseason. We don’t know what other teams can do, so we’ve got to make sure we’re focused and doing our job to win these championship races.”
Director of student activities Joe Swarm said the administration is more inclined to reschedule games rather than cancel them because of how passionate students are about their sports.
“I know [rescheduling] is not ideal for anyone,” Swarm said. “In a perfect world, you have a schedule and everyone knows what it is, because […] you have projects, you have exams, especially in an IB school.”
In addition to making the sports aspect of a student athlete’s life more difficult, the situation also takes away time from their studies.
“When I get home there’s no time to do anything because of all of the games,” Slivinski said.
2018-10-22