Area teams weather the snowstorms

By Paul D. Bowker
Posted 2/10/21

Only one word can apply to define the high school basketball season of 2020-21: Nightmare.

What else can you say?

And that’s to mention nothing about wins and losses, game-winning shots …

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Area teams weather the snowstorms

Posted

Only one word can apply to define the high school basketball season of 2020-21: Nightmare.

What else can you say?

And that’s to mention nothing about wins and losses, game-winning shots and game-losing free throws, bad referee calls and good referee calls, supporting fans or yelling fans.

The season began with COVID-19.

Some teams not only lost games, but precious practices. The boys basketball teams at Highland and Lone Tree both lost weeks of preseason workouts at a time when they had zero returning starters from last year.

Nightmare.

And now this.

Weather.

Let’s not talk about a snow day or two. We’re talking snow day after snow day after snow day. We’re talking about sub-zero temperatures and sub-freezing temps for weeks at a time. Roads are covered by snow and ice. The real discussion is how much snow and ice.

I’m wondering if we’re about to become the next set location for “Ice Road Truckers.”

And let’s not even mention the wind-chill numbers that are now dipping beneath 20-below.

OK. Enough whining.

All of the above has tossed the high school basketball season into a frenzy.

At one point, Mid-Prairie’s boys basketball team was getting ready for six games in nine nights. That’s an NBA schedule, not high school, not even college. Of course, weather intervened and those six games didn’t actually happen.

Lone Tree, with 10 games scheduled in 10 days, was actually planning to play a boys basketball doubleheader on Saturday.

I’ve never heard of such a thing. Not basketball where game plans and strategies are so critical to a team’s success, and where having a point guard play for 64 minutes in one day is suicidal.

Well, it snowed Saturday.

So Lone Tree didn’t play at all.

Not so for the high-flying North Linn boys basketball squad. They played twice Saturday at different locations. And they won both games. Wow.

I have refereed high school soccer in five different states, and I can tell you that bad weather – specifically severe weather – destroys high school schedules. In Alabama last year, the constant barrage of afternoon and evening thunderstorms canceled games for weeks a time, it seemed. High school athletic directors and referee assignors spend their mornings rescheduling all this stuff, and then after more storms later that day, they do it all over again.

But basketball?

It’s played indoors. We could always depend on a hoops game being played.

Not this year.

We’re fighting COVID-19 and the weather.

Masks required.

Oh. Ski masks required.

I once spent three weeks in Kansas City when the temperature didn’t go above zero, day or night, for three weeks.

It’s beginning to feel a bit like that.

Paul Bowker is sports editor of The News. He can be reached at sports@thenews-ia.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul.