Monday, December 11, 2017

In which the weather outside was frightful

That used to be the Bump weekend.

When I first got involved in all of this, Bump was the second weekend of December. In one of the early years before I was the coach, the snow started on Saturday and tournament ended early and everyone was sent home. Since we were housing kids from North Carolina, they were sent back to our house. They had never personally seen snow before. We had to explain to them that we old hands in the snow business always thought it prudent to put on a coat before venturing out to play in it.

I don’t recall ending the tournament early during the years on my watch, but I do remember worrying about the weather reports, starting sometime around July. I would obsess over the forecast. One year I did cancel the tournament on the Thursday morning. I prayed and prayed that the storm would 1) come and 2) be devastating. The last thing you want to do is cancel for the odd flurry. I remember that the snow on Friday was up to my knees. I was very happy to see that.

When Newburgh Free Academy eliminated their tournament the second week in November, I was on it immediately. If I didn’t take it, someone else would, so I planted my flag before anyone else even knew the ground was soft. Ridge, which had been in January, looked longingly on the December weekend and planted its flag on the old Bump dates. In about the decade or so of running on that weekend, Ridge has had to shut down early twice. Hen Hud obviously got out while the getting was good.

Of course, when I vacated the NFA weekend, Scarsdale, formerly in the dead of winter, immediately lifted its nose in the air, smelled the leafy autumn air of November, and slid right in before anyone else was even thinking about it.

Weekends are like that. There’s good ones and there’s bad ones, but one definite thing is that they are possessions. You have your weekend, and you stay with it. First of all, a lot of schools have to plan their travel the previous year, so you’d better be when they expect you to be. And second of all, these weekends are not mentally fungible. Yes, changes can happen, but only following catastrophic events, like a tournament shutting down, which does occur occasionally. Around here, it’s always colleges that think they can make a quick buck running a high school tournament, and when we tell them that no one will show up if they schedule in the middle of May, decide to run against an established event. We talk them out of that, too, but they are always out there, champing at the bit. And winter high school events, for the most part, would much rather be autumn high school events.

Ah, debate weekends. They’re like boats. Either you own one or you don’t. And, if you do own one, you probably want to own a better one. And, if you do own one, whenever it is, it will no doubt take over your life. The worst thing that can happen, after having it take over your life for months and months, is having to cancel it in advance. I’ve done it. JV has done it. We made Columbia do it. Lakeland has done it. It’s the nature of winter: what can you do?

(Shorter version of this post: Ridge got cancelled right after prelims. It was the right decision. It was snowing away, but it seems as if everyone got home safely. So it goes.)


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