The season’s first big snowstorm in the Northeast disrupted college basketball games, high school football championships and horse racing Saturday, but New England ski resorts got just what they were looking for.

Rutgers called off its men’s and women’s basketball games, with a foot of snow having fallen by midday in northern New Jersey. The No. 22 Scarlet Knights women’s team was scheduled against Temple; the men were to have played Monmouth. No makeup dates have been set. In New York, where hundreds of flights were canceled at area airports, the Fordham men’s and women’s basketball games were delayed a day. The New York Islanders’ NHL game against Chicago proceeded. Fans who attended and ticket-holders unable to make it were offered free tickets to another game.

The Tampa Bay Lightning stayed in Buffalo, N.Y., on Saturday night after playing the Sabres instead of flying to New York for a Sunday afternoon game against the Rangers.

The Lightning will attempt to travel on Sunday and are prepared to head right to Madison Square Garden, if necessary, to play at 5 p.m. EST, team spokesman Jay Freble said.

Horse racing shut down at Aqueduct and Yonkers Raceway in New York, at Laurel in Maryland and at Charles Town in West Virginia. The National Weather Service issued blizzard warnings for parts of Maine and Connecticut.

, southeastern New York and New Jersey. Forecasters warned as much as 2 feet of snow was possible by Sunday in parts of Massachusetts and Vermont.

In Connecticut, the Quinnipiac at Central Connecticut State men’s basketball game was postponed as was the Bentley College hockey game at Sacred Heart.

High school football championships in Connecticut and Massachusetts were put off.

In Pennsylvania, the NCAA Division III football quarterfinal between Bridgewater and Lycoming was pushed to Sunday.

The start of a Division I-AA football quarterfinal in Delaware was delayed a half hour after 6 inches of snow fell overnight. Stadium workers plowed the tarp and shoveled the sidelines and end zones. Fans used seat cushions, ice scrapers and gloved hands to clear snow from metal bleachers before Delaware’s 37-7 victory over Northern Iowa.

Football in Hamilton, N.Y., had an old-fashioned look: Colgate and Western Illinois played their Division I-AA quarterfinal in blinding snow, with yard markers invisible and players skidding on a white-blanketed field. Colgate won 28-27.

As for New England ski areas, the day simply glistened.

“The snow is fantastic,” said Peter Dee, marketing director for Bromley Mountain Ski Resort in Vermont.

Mike Colbourn, vice president of marketing for Vermont’s Stowe Mountain, saw green amid the white.

“The parking lots are full right now,” he said. “It feels like a midwinter weekend.”

AP-ES-12-06-03 2121EST