Winter weather causes headaches for local sports

Local sports events in North Idaho have always been staples in the community events calendars, but with athletics comes the obstacle that is traveling in the often unpredictable weather.

Over the past few years teams and schools have dealt with everything from wildfires and smoke to windstorms and more recently, extreme winter weather.

Due to plummeting temperatures and heavy snowfall over the last few weeks Wallace, Kellogg, and Mullan have all had games canceled which has tested the teams dedication and their mental toughness, all the while the school’s athletic directors have been scrambling to make sure that all avenues are explored to get as many of the games rescheduled as possible.

“It can be disappointing when games get canceled. The kids look forward to these games and when they cannot play them they get bummed out,” Wallace Jr./Sr. High School AD Bruce Bailey said. “It can be very difficult to reschedule games sometimes, especially towards the end of the sports season. Sometimes between the two schools, the days don’t match up and we are also dealing with semester test week and other school functions.”

Wallace in particular lost a North Star League contest against Clark Fork that will require priority scheduling, whereas Mullan and Kellogg lost games that they would like to have back, but won’t have any impact on the long term conference portion of their season.

Wallace girls coach Nichole Farkas was pleased to hear that one of their missed games was already rescheduled and the administration was working to get the other game rescheduled as well, but that was also in part due to the fact that they already lost two games off their schedule.

Farkas also explained why losing games puts big gaps in between games which can cause consistency issues.

“Our game with Bonners has already been rescheduled, and I assume our Clark Fork game will be rescheduled as well,” Farkas said. “If we were not able to play those two games, it would hurt a bit because out of a 20 game schedule we already lost the two games we were supposed to play against Mullan (since they went to a JV schedule). Therefore, we really started out with an 18 game schedule. Sometimes I think it is hard to get in the flow of playing and making adjustments if there is too much time between games.”

Kellogg boys coach Jeff Nearing offered further perspective as to the difficulty of managing a team when games are being canceled.

When asked what he does to keep his players focused when these situations arise, Nearing was very honest about the challenge.

“Good question,” Nearing said. “In this case the big issue is the duration between games due to cancellations. More to the point trying to keep practice from becoming stagnant. We try to simulate some game type situations and also add some drills that are competitive and at the same time entertaining and fun in an effort to break up the monotony.”

Nearing also curtailed Farkas in reasons why playing as many games as possible is important to these teams with aspirations of postseason glory.

The Kellogg boys missed two games last week when they were supposed to travel to Freeman High School in back to back days for two of the tougher games on their schedule.

Nearing specifically requested that Kellogg’s AD put together a tougher non-conference schedule than what they have had in the past in hopes to get them ready for the teams they see at state.

“The two games we had canceled were against very talented teams. Both of whom I expect will be playing at the state tourney in Washington come March,” Nearing said. “If we have any desire to get to and compete at our State Tourney in March we need as many games as we can get against this level of competition. Not to say we don’t have several very tough games left on our schedule but it would be nice to have two more.”

Some coaches have utilized missed games to review game film with their teams, while others have used the time for team building and bonding exercises.

At this time, make-up game schedules haven’t been released to the Shoshone News-Press yet, but as soon as that information is released we will have on Facebook page.