Mother Nature already affecting Friday games

Mother Nature is not to be trifled with.

At least that is the view of a number of high schools that have adjusted Friday's football games' start times.

The Bellevue at West Branch and Louisa-Muscatine at West Burlington and West Liberty at Mt. Vernon games were played Thursday because of the Friday forecast.

WACO has moved its game to 5 p.m. Friday.

According to weather.com, the forecast for Friday predicts thunderstorms from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and again from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. with showers until after midnight for Washington County.

The Iowa High School Athletic Association's has a policy for how to handle the suspension or postponement of regular season football games (or in this case, move up) which trusts the member schools involved to make the correct and safe decisions for their participants and spectators.

'The IHSAA is simply informed of the decision,” said Chris Cuellar of the IHSAA. 'If a decision is being made prior to the contest occurring, the home school's administrators can make the determination with administrators from both schools needing to agree on the reschedule date. After the contest begins, the game officials assume authority.”

Lee Crawford is the Sigourney athletic director and Sigourney-Keota is hosting Wilton. 'We are not moving our game. We did have a conversation about it, but looked at the forecast and believe that the rain will pass.”

There are other logistics to consider when moving a game time and/or date.

Jake McCullough is the Columbus AD. 'I did talk with Van Buren about moving to Thursday night, but there is SEISC Super Conference volleyball pool play and we would like our fans to go and watch and support our teams at the event. Most of the time when we look at moving an event like this, we make sure we have workers for the events and referees are open to come and work the games. If you can get that, you can move an event and make it happen on a different night.”

While it is up to schools to make decisions in the regular season, in the postseason it is the IHSAA who would step in and move games to different dates or change times.

Mt. Pleasant athletic director Scot Lamm had no idea as of 3 p.m. Thursday 'as each forecast seems to tell a little different story. We are going to wait and see what happens. We hope to play Friday night. If not, with our Homecoming and IW Homecoming activities Saturday, our only other option is to play on Monday.”

Pekin also has Homecoming to consider.

'There was some consideration of moving the game up,” Pekin athletic director and head football coach Bud Blakely said. 'It's an extremely difficult decision to make as you never have 100 percent accurate information to work with and there are multiple things going on here with homecoming festivities being planned. We will continue with the game as scheduled, but will evaluate the situation (Friday) morning with Cardinal (which is Pekin's opponent) and make the best decision we can based off the weather reports we have in front of us at that time.”

Highland plays at BGM Friday. Highland co-head football coach and co-AD Joe Donovan said it is an administration choice.

'The difference to me personally is the forecast of the storms,” Donovan said. 'If lightning and thunder are in the forecast where the game will be stopped for thunder and lightning, I would then consider alternative solutions.”

The IHSAA handbook on rules and regulations says the safety of the participants is to be considered first, then the spectators and the last consideration is the playing surface.

Mother Nature is not to be trifled with.