How School Sports Teams Respond to Snow Cancellations

With nearly six feet of snow having fallen upon Boston this winter, several Massachusetts high schools have been forced to postpone after-school sporting events.

An Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) spokesman, however, said that the state's teams should not have much trouble preparing themselves for postseason play despite the weather.

"We've been down this road before and we've been okay," Paul Wetzel said.

Wetzel recalled a recent spring sports season that forced several postponements in baseball and track and field. Teams were forced to schedule games as doubleheaders and play frequently on Sundays. Though snow would seem to be more troublesome than rain, Wetzel said that this winter's turbulent weather has not had as negative an effect as that season's.

The MIAA does place a restriction on the number of games a team can play a week -- three -- but is willing to waive the rule when postponements happen so frequently. So long as games are rescheduled and played by tournament time, Wetzel said, then state tournaments will be ready to go come tournament time. It is essential, he said, that teams do play all the games they had planned, as it effects tournament seeding. Schools' athletic directors are responsible for making sure that all non-tournament postponed games are rescheduled, even if they have to be done at odd times.

Should tournament games be postponed, though, it is up to the MIAA to reschedule them.

"There have been times we've had to postpone tournament games," Wetzel said. "So we act in the same capacity as athletic directors in that situation."

Tournament games are sometimes tough to schedule because those that come in later rounds frequently occur at neutral arenas with as big a profile as the TD Garden, making it tough to reschedule for that site specifically. Wetzel said, the MIAA is always able to reschedule a tournament game somewhere, even if they have to change locations, at a later date and then "go when we can."

Hockey is generally the toughest sport to reschedule because teams generally use outside venues as opposed to their own fields and gyms. Catholic Memorial plays its games at Boston University's Walter Brown Arena. Wetzel added teams are always able to make something work.

Wetzel also suggested that athletes are not too heavily effected by the changes in schedule. By this point in the season, players are in a routine of either going to school and practicing or going to school and playing a game, and a cancellation is unlikely to have much of an effect on their mindset. Similarly, players that are being recruited by colleges are unlikely to suffer from the weather's effect, he said.

"If the player's any good, the colleges are going to make an effort to see them, and they're going to want to see them more than once," Wetzel said. "Just like the athletes, if a game gets canceled, it'll get played eventually, and they'll just have to make it to the make-up."