Twice the Maine Principal’s Association team golf championships have been rescheduled in the last week, and the end still might not be in sight.
Rain forced the cancellation of the event last Saturday. Rescheduled for Monday, a school holiday for most districts, another wet day forced the teams to stay home, prompting the MPA to move the event for this Saturday, running concurrently with the state individual golf tournament. Both tournaments are to be held at Natanis Golf Course in Vassalboro.
“Right now, the plan is to have the boys go this weekend, both the teams and the individuals,” said Jeff Sturgis, an Assistant Executive Director for the MPA. “The boys will each play one round, and that score is going to count for both their individual score and for the team score.”
For the girls, who have a separate open tournament, things got a bit more complicated. Because the girls will not be divided into classes for the individual tournament, there would be no consistency to any of the their scores if they happened to be playing on a team. If one girl played for a Class C school, and another for a Class A school, they would play different courses on Saturday.
“The girls can’t go this Saturday,” said Sturgis. “We’ll run the girls on Tuesday. Unfortunately, that means that any girl playing with their team on Saturday will have to come back again on Tuesday the 18th to play again.”
Logistically, it seems like a tough task. The tournaments had been separated in part to help the golf course and the MPA with scoring and routing issues. Now, not only will the states top teams be trudging up and down the fairways, so will every qualified individual. Even with Natanis’ 36-hole layout, the course is likely to take a beating.
“The golf course is going to be wet,” said Lewiston High School golf coach Don Jalbert. “It was a bit wet when we went up to practice last week, on Friday before the original match date.
“There hasn’t been a warm sun or warm temperatures to help it dry out, either, and we’re supposed to get more rain this week.”
And making things even worse for the MPA is another threat of rain, predicted to last from Thursday night through the day Saturday.
If that happens, said Sturgis, the MPA will likely be forced to take the golfers out of school next week.
“We can’t just keep saying Saturdays,” said Sturgis. “What if we get another rainy Saturday? Then we’re almost into November. At that point, what we’ll do is we’ll look at the 10-day forecast and pick the safest day next week. We’ll just have to pull the kids out of school.”
Late Wednesday, the MPA confirmed a contingency plan, which, in case of another rainout Saturday, will move the team and boys’ individual tournaments to Tuesday, Oct. 18 at 10 a.m., while the girls’ individual tournament would follow on Wednesday the 19th at 11 a.m.
Because the MPA will be making decisions affecting schools in Washington and Aroostook Counties, Sturgis said that a decision about Saturday could come as early as Friday morning.
Meanwhile, teams that have qualified for the event, and the individuals, are squeezing in practice time when they can.
“Everyone is in the same boat, so to speak,” said Jalbert. “The reality is that everyone has the same conditions to play in, so we’re just going to have the let the chips fall where they may.”
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