The snowstorm at the end of last week wiped out most of the high school contests on Thursday and Friday, but overall the first half of the winter sports season hasn’t had many weather-related interruptions. Bud Legg is the spokesman for the Iowa High School Athletic Association which oversees boys’ sports. “Through Friday we’ll probably have maybe about 120 cancellations of boys’ games and probably for every boys’ game there’s probably a girls’ game that’s been cancelled, and a comparable number of wrestling events,” Legg says. He says it’s the most cancellations they’ve had in the last two years.

“You know last year we had a really, really great year. But three years ago we had over 900 cancellations for the winter, and we’re just talking just boys’ sports at that time,” Legg says. “And of those 900, we had all but about 75 or 80 of them were made up.” The cancellations lead to a lot of calendar checking by the athletic directors at each school. Legg says they have to match schedules for open dates and see if the officials are available, all while checking to be sure there are no conflicts with other school events such as music concerts and plays. The sports teams do not practice on Christmas Eve or Christmas, and then it is up to the coaches how long a break they give before starting up practice again. Legg says the association does not allow any regular games during a school’s Christmas break.

“They’ll have scrimmages…at maybe two or three schools at the same site and get in some scrimmage time. Because the school staff is on vacation, the athletic association for probably going on 30-35 years now, has determined that is not a good time to try and play games,” Legg says. The teams will return from break and begin playing games again in January.

(Radio Iowa)