With snow blanketing Snohomish County, all of Monday night’s high school basketball games involving local teams were rescheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday, but cold temperatures late Monday night and further school cancellations left the rest of the week’s schedule in doubt.
As of press time Monday night, the following school districts had announced school would be closed on Tuesday: Arlington, Coupeville, Edmonds, Everett, Granite Falls, Lake Stevens, Lakewood, Marysville, Monroe, Mukilteo, Oak Harbor, Snohomish, South Whidbey and Stanwood. Archbishop Murphy High School also is closed Tuesday.
The Sultan School District and the Shoreline School District were on a two-hour delay as of 9:30 p.m. Monday.
On the Wesco athletics website, only the Cascade-Monroe girls basketball game was listed as rescheduled, for Wednesday. The status of all other Tuesday games, either originally scheduled or rescheduled, had yet to be determined.
Monday was slated to be the final night of conference play for Wesco 3A/2A teams, with seven games apiece on the boys and girls sides, but with postseason games set to begin Wednesday (3A District 1 girls play-ins, 2A District 1 boys), Thursday (4A Wes-King district girls, 3A District 1 boys play-ins, 2A District 1 girls) or Friday (4A Wes-King district boys), administrators don’t have a lot of options in attempting to reschedule games.
Typically, schools do not host athletic events on days when school is canceled, but the impending postseason and the possibility of teams having to play games on consecutive days may force drastic action.
Snohomish High School athletic director Mark Perry said Monday night that he was engaging Everett School District AD Robert Polk in conversation about whether Snohomish could host Everett’s girls team Tuesday night, despite both schools being closed.
Everett is one of the two teams in the district play-in game, which is still scheduled for Wednesday.
Availability of officials is another wrench in the rescheduling process. Boys and girls games are typically not scheduled on the same days because there aren’t enough officials to cover them all. Attempting to reschedule all the boys games and all the girls games for Wednesday may be too much for area officials to bear.
Snow also pushed back the start of the 1A Northwest District boys and girls tournaments from Monday to Tuesday, but no updates on those contests were available Monday night.