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Here comes the rain again ...
Herald-Tribune
FORT SCOTT, Kan. -- It's not easy being an activities director but Fort Scott High School's A.D., Larry Fink, enjoys some of the challenges of his job.
Last spring and so far early this spring, most of that challenge has been figuring out if a game can be played or when it can be made up as rain keeps disrupting scheduled activities.
September and April are the two busiest months of the athletic calendar, according to Fink. Of the two, April perhaps offers even more of a challenge since every sport is an outdoor sport and it's more likely there will be multiple events on the same day. There are also year-end music and honors events to take into consideration in the spring.
"I had 39 reschedules last spring alone," Fink said Thursday afternoon in his office. "There were three today: baseball, softball and tennis.
"I have to notify bus drivers, coaches, the media. The host school makes the ultimate decision. If we're the visiting team, I have to wait on the host to make the decision, then I notify our people. When it's a home contest, you have all sort of things -- workers, grounds crew, officials. Getting in contact with officials -- they're all at work -- is sometimes like pulling teeth."
As activities director, Fink also coordinates non-athletic events such as band, music and forensics. In fact, a detailed job description for the activities director includes scheduling events, contracting with schools, coordinating transportation and budgets, overseeing player eligibility, scheduling facilities, arranging personnel schedules, providing release lists to teachers and providing reports to district, school and community officials.
That's not even the complete list of duties. But one can see how many things have to be coordinated on a good day. Throw weather into the mix and it becomes much more complicated.
A good example came on Wednesday. It turned out that was a day with good weather and there was an idea going around that perhaps, knowing there was a great chance of rain Thursday, the baseball and softball games against Pittsburg could have been held Wednesday.
But there was an honors banquet Wednesday and playing baseball and softball on that day would have forced many students to make a choice between their sport and the banquet. There would have also been the matter of rescheduling officials and workers. The ones scheduled for Thursday may not have been able to work on Wednesday.
There's also an obligation to notify the visiting school in a sufficient amount of time so that it can make arrangements. They have to schedule buses and drivers. Rule 10 coaches who don't work for the school district need to notify their employers.
Just moving a game isn't easy. And it takes input from many people.
"On the days we're scheduled to play, I talk to a multitude of people," Fink said. "At the college field, (Fort Scott Community College head baseball coach) Chris Moddelmog is right there. He can walk a few steps outside his office and tell me how it is there. I rely a lot on Joe Clary (U-234 groundskeeper). He preps all the fields. He's there every day getting the fields ready.
"I look at three or four different weather stations. And I try not to make the decision before noon, unless it's an obvious decision. But I also try to let the other school know at least two hours before they're scheduled to depart."
Fink said that some people will approach him early in the day looking for a decision but that he tries not to say anything definitive until he has all the information. If he tells someone at 9 a.m. that there's a chance for a cancellation but then things improve significantly by noon, there would be quite a bit of resulting confusion.
If an event is postponed, then the schools involved have to find a mutually workable make-up date. Playing Thursday's baseball and softball games Friday, as an example, wouldn't have been feasible because of how much rain each of the facilities have taken this week. Lions Field, where the baseball games would have been played, was good enough on the infield to allow FSCC's infielders to work on some things. But the outfield was waterlogged to the point where earthworms had come up from the ground to get away from the water in the soil.
There's also the availability of officials and workers to consider. There are a limited number of officials and league commissioners are already sending out as many umpires as they can find on a given day. It's a strong possibility that two schools may agree on a perfect date -- only to find out there aren't any officials available that day.
"You have to check the juco's schedule," Fink says. "We have to check Buck Run (Community Center)'s schedule. We have to check Pittsburg's schedule. We have to look at the availability of officials. You can't just throw a bat out there and play ball. There's so many other factors that go into it. And not with just our school but also the school that competes with us.
"To be honest," Fink added, "I want to play the games if it's at all possible because it's so much easier than trying to reschedule."
Even if there are officials, the facilities have to be available. In Fort Scott, there's not much of a problem when it comes to baseball and softball since there are multiple facilities for each. Other towns, such as Altamont and Columbus, have only one baseball field and fewer softball fields.
Track meets aren't difficult to reschedule when it comes to facilities since most towns only host one meet a year. Golf and tennis have a bit more difficulty because few cities have more than one place to hold these events.
Sometimes, a postponement or cancellation occurs because league play takes precedent. There have been cases in the past where a school has to cancel a non-league game because it's had difficulty finding a good date to play a league game. It happened, in a way, to Fort Scott High's junior varsity baseball when Columbus and Labette County needed to find a make-up date for varsity games against each other.
"The rescheduled it on a day (April 21) when we were scheduled to play down there," Fink said. "Labette County had to call me and say, 'The only date we had available was this date. So we're not going to be able to play JV baseball that day. What do you want to do?'
"So I had to reschedule JV baseball with Labette County for a reason that originally didn't affect me. But when you reschedule, there's a ripple effect for everybody else that's involved at all with that school. Fortunately, Pittsburg and I were able to find a date (April 10) that didn't involve any other league schools, so we didn't have that ripple effect. But that can happen a lot."
The JV baseball games in question were moved to April 22, which happened to be a day when Fort Scott and Labette County were scheduled to play softball games. When Fink announced the changes to staff and officials, he noted that the teams will take the same bus since the fields in Altamont are right next to each other.
Hopefully, 2008 will not be as challenging for Fink as the spring of 2007 was. Many events never got rescheduled simply because there wasn't enough time in the spring season after so many washouts.
But if there are going to be challenges in 2008, he's ready for them.