Weather postpones high school events

About the only local sports not canceled Wednesday night were snowball fights. Those have been making quite a comeback this winter.

High school sporting events across Long Island were postponed after one more in a long line of winter storms this season dropped what is expected to be 8-12 inches of snow in Nassau and Suffolk.

Thanks to Regents testing and midterms this week, however, the high school sports schedule was light to begin with, as there were no Nassau contests and only about a dozen CHSAA boys and girls basketball games on the slate. Suffolk was hit hardest, with 24 boys and girls basketball games and wrestling events scheduled.

So while previous winter weather this year has sometimes resulted in mass cancellations, high school sports officials might be relatively lucky that the latest batch of snow hit when it did.

"It is a blessing that we don't have that many events to reschedule," said Ed Cinelli, executive director of Section XI (Suffolk) athletics, who believes that many of the events will be made up. "A lot of, if not all of, these events will be rescheduled hopefully for [Thursday]. And if not then, we'll be looking to reschedule them for Friday and Saturday."

However, such a quick turnaround may not be possible. The storm that began in the morning is expected to continue through the night and not subside until early this morning.

"There's a worry, but we can't control the weather," Cinelli said. "This has been, in my experience, one of the worst winters we've gone through. We have a full month of February ahead of us, and into March, with the possibility of more weather cancellations."

Todd Heimer, the executive director of Section VIII (Nassau) athletics, said the county offices will be ready to deal with the weather whenever it comes. "When it does happen in any other week, with the cooperation of all the school districts and athletic departments, we make do," he said. "We adapt."