Well, I guess I know now what areas of western Iowa have gone through over the past couple of Augusts. We've had weather/lightning delays with Xavier football before - heck, we've had them the past two seasons in the opening game - but we've never had a complete cancellation like we had this past Friday night.
The forecast was for pretty widespread rain and scattered thunderstorms, although 1) the NWS seemed to indicate the conditions weren't all that great for thunderstorms and 2) the local meteorologists were saying Friday morning that most of the rain/action would be north of Cedar Rapids, along Highway 20, and that things would be letting up by evening.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. While we had steady, light rain most of the day, it had stopped by mid-afternoon and the sky actually looked pretty good. Right about 5:00, though, the skies got really dark and the rain started. And then it got heavy. Then it let up for a while, but got heavy again. Then it really poured. No lightning, though, so the sophomore game played on.
Then, with just under 10 minutes to go in the sophomore game (right around 6:30, I think), a bolt of lightning. The game was stopped, the stadium was cleared, and we settled in to wait out the required 30-minute delay. Which was extended when another lightning bolt was seen about 20 minutes later. And extended again for more lightning 15 minutes after that. Repeat ad infinitum ... just occasional lightning (and basically torrents of rain - north of Highway 20, riiiiiiiiight) spaced far enough apart to keep officials from getting things started up again.
So, Xavier and Dowling never got going, and will never get going. In one of the side effects of district play, you have a situation where you had a non-district game, with opponents from different parts of the state and long travel times, facing a potential rescheduling requiring long travel again within the next couple of days (since the next 8 weeks are already taken up with other games). Even though the state athletic association says suspended/postponed games must be completed, the only penalty for not doing so is losing out on points for playoff qualification. Hey, guess what? We don't use points for playoff qualification anymore. All that matters is district records and district finish, and since this was a non-district game with zero district implications .... canceled. Xavier and Dowling are going to have only 8 games this season.
It's unfortunate for everybody - the players lose a chance to get their season started and play some football, the coaches lose a chance to evaluate where they stand and how the guys are performing, and the fans lose out on watching what could have been a pretty darn good game. But, there was absolutely no way a game was getting played in Cedar Rapids on Friday night. There was still occasional lightning after 10 pm, which means even if they had been able to start the game by then, it would have been stopped. Now you're pushing the end the game past midnight, with one team and fan contingent still looking at a 2-hour drive back to Des Moines.
So, phooey on the start of the 2015 season. Pretty much all the other games around eastern Iowa either never started or got stopped during play, and will be completed on Saturday. But Xavier and Dowling just have an empty space where this game result would be. (Or a Blank Space if you're a Taylor Swift fan, I suppose.)
Onward to next week, and Davenport Assumption coming to Saints Field. The Knights are expected to be very good this year, among the favorites in District 5. They dropped their first game to 4A power Bettendorf on Friday 35-28, although Assumption's final TD came with only seconds left to play. Still, Assumption brings back a lot of talent from 2014, when they were hit hard by injuries, and it should be a good test of both the Knights and the Saints this coming Friday.
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