Colgan head coach Chuck Smith won’t say that he told you so, but he did see it coming.
“We knew it was going to rain,” he said. “I believe in the weather man. He hit it right on the nose.”
But nobody saw it coming quite this hard.
Lightning and inclement weather postponed the Kickoff Classic on Thursday night at Hutchinson Field.
The game between the Colgan Panthers and the Girard Trojans will be made-up tonight at 7.
Inclement weather had initially postponed the start of the game by 30 minutes before the continued inclement weather eventually postponed the game until tonight.
Heavy rain moved into the Pittsburg area around 6:30 p.m. on Thursday night. Officials tried to avoid having to move the game by delaying the start time to 7:30 to allow the storm system to pass through.
Only it didn’t.
The rain let up around 7 p.m. and players returned to the field to begin pre-game warm-ups, but lightning relegated both teams back to the locker room. The game was officially called around 8 p.m. Girard was transported out by bus as the Panthers went back to the locker room at St. Mary’s Colgan Fieldhouse.
“We kept hoping that it would be through by 7:30 or 8 o’clock,” Smith said. “But it looked like it was going to keep coming for a long time so the administration felt they had to cancel. For the safety of the kids, there’s just no other choice. It was the best thing.”
For two team’s worth of players, the situation was just as frustrating as it was out of their control.
“It’s horrible,” Colgan junior Christian Smith said. “We were all ready to go, we’ve been ready all year and then this happens. But we’ll come back to (tonight) and try to do the same thing.”
