Photo by Pat Coleman,
D3football.com
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Saturday was a great day for football but saw the
Bridgewater/Lycoming game for the South Region title postponed
because of Friday night's weather.
While everyone involved said they wished the game had been played
today, it doesn't take precedent over the safety of the players.
"The issue wasn't snow," said Debbie Warren, the co-chair of the
Division III football South Region committee and the NCAA's
representative at the game. "Upon assessing the field, there were
patches of ice. The ground was ice itself."
Although the field was ready for warmups by 12:30 p.m., that would
have pushed kickoff to 1:30, and with no lights at Lycoming's
stadium, there was no guarantee the game would be completed before
dark.
"When I was over there at 9 this morning it was unplayable," said
Bridgewater head coach Mike Clark. "In Division III there are worse
places to be stuck. At least we're stuck in a nice hotel."
"They had to make that call early because there were too many
people traveling," said Girardi.
"This was not a decision that came lightly, but had to be made in
light of student-athlete welfare," said Warren.
"It"s something new, but we are going to meet and go through some
walk-throughs," said Girardi. "We"re just going to get together and
use some of the stuff we reviewed yesterday."
"You think you've got them ready to play," said Clark, "you have to
hope that mentally they'll still go out and play very hard."
"We've been through lightning delays and other things," said Clark,
"but this is kind of a new one."