Scheduling Updates

When TigerBlog was a kid, the forecast of snow came with the hope that there might just be a day off from school.

Snow days were better than planned off days. For holidays, you just pushed your homework off a day. For snow days, you could never really be sure, so you had to have all your homework done. The snow day was a total bonus, a day off, with nothing really to do (other than play football in the snow or something like that).

When TB's kids were in nursery school over at U-League, on the other side of the Jadwin parking lot, there was a phone list that would go around, where the school would call one family and then that family would call two, who would call two more, until everyone was notified.

Once they got into elementary school through high school, it would just a matter of going on the website and looking, or signing up for a text message that would tell you.

When TB was a kid, there was no internet and there was no cell phones. To find out if there was no school, you had to listen to the radio in the morning, or catch the crawl on TV. Once you heard your school called, everything was great. If you didn't hear your school but you heard neighboring districts? That was the worst.

The forecast in Princeton was for three inches of snow overnight. That one would have been iffy. It's not a sure thing, like in 1978, when 30 inches of snow wiped out a whole week. On the other hand, it's not just a dusting, where MotherBlog would say "get up and go to school."

For those who are in charge of scheduling college athletics (and pro and high school, for that matter), there's a bit of nostalgia for having to deal only with bad weather. The three inches of snow wouldn't have mattered as far as the weekend schedule for Princeton Athletics, but unfortunately there's a tougher factor these days to have to work around.

As such, the weekend at Princeton has been greatly affected by the new Covid variant. 

Today is still a gameday. Probably. Hopefully, perhaps, is a better word to use. 

In the current world of athletics, there is no way to be certain what the schedule will be from one day to the next, especially with indoor sports involved now. Actually, that's more hour to hour.

It's not an easy way to prepare, probably more so mentally than physically. It also makes, or should make, every athlete on every level appreciate the moments of competition.

The women's basketball team had its game against Columbia for tonight postponed and will play only at Cornell tomorrow afternoon (4). Hopefully.

The original word for the men's hockey team was that it would not be able to play Brown tomorrow but would be able to play Yale tonight. Then, about five hours later, the game against Yale was postponed as well.

The men's basketball team is set to play twice this weekend, hosting Columbia tonight (7) and Cornell tomorrow night (6). 

For all that, there's a huge event on the calendar Sunday, when the 19th ranked wrestling team hosts No. 5 North Carolina State. Hopefully. 

This is from the preview story on goprincetontigers.com: 

Princeton will wrestle six fellow teams in the most recent NWCA team rankings, which have Princeton at No. 19. Along with No. 1 Iowa in November and Sunday's match against No. 5 N.C. State, the Tigers will host No. 7 Arizona State next Sunday and No. 8 Cornell in February, and visit No. 17 Lehigh and No. 12 Rutgers later in February.

The match against North Carolina State would have brought a huge crowd to Jadwin. Unfortunately, Princeton has had to make changes to attendance policies, limiting attendance at Princeton events to only students, staff and faculty "who are fully compliant with the University's COVID-19 protocols. This attendance restriction will begin immediately and extend through January 31." 

Keep in mind, the ESPN+ broadcasts will go on as scheduled, and the coverage is excellent. 

It's unfortunate that things are in this place right now, but hopefully it's just a blip. The fall went off as smoothly as could have been expected. There will be outdoor events in a few weeks.

For now, it's time to hope that the schedule can get back to as close to normal as possible, and that things get better in February.

And that the events that are on for today stay on for today. 

Again, it makes you appreciate every opportunity to compete.