“We’re being extremely flexible. Right now, we are leaving everything up t the schools,” Damon said.
That mainly applies to the district volleyball tournaments, which were slated to begin on Monday night. With no school today or Tuesday, teams aren’t allowed to practice and games cannot be played.
Teams were originally expected to have district tournaments wrapped up by Thursday and the regional tourney brackets were going to be revealed on Friday. Regionals are slated to begin next week.
But the hurricane, which made landfall as a Category 2 storm, causing destruction throughout the area, has changed things up.
“Some of the schools thought they could have it completed by the weekend, but there is no pressure from our office,” Damon said. “This is a natural disaster, and we want to be as flexible as we can be. We can even alter games for the regional. The luxury of this sport is that we can be a little flexible.”
Regarding football, teams are hoping to get back on the field on Friday night. But if for some reason they cannot play, the option is on the table of either making it up on a Monday or eliminating a non-district game from the schedule and replacing it with a district game.
“The big thing for football is getting those district games in. There may be a case where a team has to move a non-district game off the schedule to get a district game in,” Damon said.
In the end, no matter when normalcy returns for high school athletics in the area, Damon said the well-being of everyone comes first.
“The first thing is to make sure people take care of themselves. That they have food, a place to live and they have power. Those are the main concerns,” Damon said.
Brian Lester is the Sports Editor of Sandpaper Publishing. To contact him, email him at brian@navarrepress.com.
