Probably the most stressful thing about being a league administrator is making the decision to play or postpone. We’ve had a crazy amount of rain this season (compared to almost none last season) We’ve gone from drought to soaked in short order. Even more fun is when you know the rain is coming, in torrents, but it probably won’t reach you until after your game times. So you can either postpone, or estimate when it will arrive, and go for it – hoping you don’t have to close the complex while everyone is there. Needless to say – a picture is worth 1000 words, etc. We’re right where the ‘R’ in Raleigh is:
Cue the theme music from Jaws…
I’m guessing we won’t be playing tomorrow – but we’ll continue to hope that it breaks up overnight!
Radar map from the awesome Weather Underground.
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April 4th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Good luck tomorrow. I cancelled practice for tonight because of a school event and then the county closed the fields anyway.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:42 am
We managed to get our Friday slate of matches in last night. The fields were soggy, but no standing water to speak of and the Turface we had put down the previous weekend was holding the bare spots together well.
In the second group of matches, a small cell of rain went right over us and we got a good dousing. The fields had a lot of water on them, but were holding up fine. The kids? Having a blast. I saw at least three kids take running slides across the field on their stomachs (one faked a trip in U8 to do it – was hilarious) By the time our last match of the night got ready to start, their field was SOAKED. Lots of standing water. I talked to the coaches and kids (U15 Rec) to see if they wanted to play another day and they would hear nothing of it. They were ready to go. Field was still firm – just VERY wet. They had a ball. There’s nothing pretty about soccer where the ball is slick and suddenly stops cold while you are dribbling. But it didn’t stop them – score was 11-6! Thankfully one of the kids had a real MLS adidas Teamgeist, so they used that to play because it doesn’t absorb any water thanks to the glued seams.
I’m sure plenty of parents were cursing the league as their minivans got thrashed with mud, wet cleats, and uniforms. But overall I only had one parent complain and when she said ‘but the kids are miserable’ I almost laughed out loud. The kids were having a ball – they could play in rain, get dirty, and it was OK
With the drought, it had been so long since we got rained on while games were going on, I’d almost forgotten how much fun it could be!