High school football begins return to normalcy

Tag : flashlights

A week has passed and several area schools are getting back intothe swing of things. Although several schools were still withoutpower on Monday, football practice has resumed and most teams areplanning on being on the field this weekend for games.
Some coaches are having to get a little bit creative to make thathappen.
Pearland coach Tony Heath said that his team had to make someadjustments. Since the school is still without power, the home gameagainst Pasadena has been moved from Friday night to Saturday at 2p.m. since the stadium may not have power for lights.
“We are having practices this week,” Heath said.“We will have to give the boys flashlights to use in thelocker room, but we are going to start getting ready to play thisweekend and get things back on schedule.”
Districts that start playing district games this weekend, like15-5A and 18-5A, are trying to play this weekend as scheduled.Others, like 24-5A are making adjustments.
All of the 24-5A schools are playing as scheduled except for ClearLake and Ball. Ball is still up in the air with the remainder ofits season and will not play this week, so Clear Lake picked up TheWoodlands, a team they were supposed to play two weeks ago justbefore Hurricane Ike hit the area. Those two will play atWoodforest on Friday at 7:30 p.m.
Coaches in 24-5A are in the process of coming up with a plan forwhether or not Ball can return to play district games. If theTornadoes can play next week, everything will gho back to normalschedule and Ball and Clear Lake will make up their game. If not,the district will have to come up with another plan.
“We are in discussions about that right now,” ClearCreek coach Darrell Warden said. “There are some plans outthere but nothing has been approved yet.”
In the meantime, other schools are looking beyond this week, tryingto make up for games that were canceled due to Ike the last twoweekends. North Shore, which is off again this week because so manyplayers are still without power, picked up a game at Lufkin on Oct.3.
Cinco Ranch, who was supposed to face Cypress Ridge last week, willtravel to Southlake Carroll on Oct. 3.
“I think it will be a great game,” Cinco Ranch coachDon Clayton said. “We know they are a great team and we arelooking forward to making that trip and adding a great footballteam to our schedule.”
One district that will not be able to resume play this weekend is19-4A, which includes Galena Park, Goose Creek Memorial, Crosby,Dayton, North Forest, C.E. King, Kingwood Park and Barbers Hill.They have moved all games to next Tuesday. To give the teams anextra day with the Tuesday games, all games that were scheduled forOct. 3 in 19-4A are now moved to Oct. 4.
jenny.dial@chron.com