Snowfall forces schools to cancel sporting events

By MATT TUNSETH

Frontiersman

MAT-SU — All outdoor high school sporting events planned for this weekend were canceled due to snow.

“It’s all broken arrows around here,” Wasilla athletic director Paul Cossette said Friday afternoon.

The weekend was supposed to be a busy one for Mat-Su teams, with the Colony, Wasilla, Palmer and Houston soccer teams scheduled to host Kenai Peninsula squads on Friday and Saturday. Additionally, Mat-Su track and field teams had planned on heading south for the Skyview Invitational in Soldotna.

But a spring snowstorm that hit Southcentral Alaska early Friday morning has forced those events to be called off.

The unseasonably snowy conditions caused several teams to alter their travel plans at the last minute.

Kenai Central athletic director Tim Delaney said his school’s soccer teams had just boarded buses on their way north when word that the games were being canceled forced the buses to turn around and head back to school.

“We got about as far as Sterling,” Delaney said.

Most of the soccer games scheduled for this weekend pitted Northern Lights Conference North and South Division teams against one another, so they weren’t as critical for conference play as games featuring in-division teams.

With just a month left in the regular season, Cossette said it’s unlikely any of this weekend’s soccer games will be able to be made up.

The following is a list of cancelled events:

Friday:

Soccer (boys and girls) — Kenai Central at Colony; Grace Christian at Houston; Nikiski at Wasilla; Soldotna at Palmer.

Track and field — Wasilla, Palmer, Colony, Houston and Su Valley at Skyview Invitational

Saturday:

Soccer (boys and girls) — Kenai Central at Palmer; Nikiski at Houston

Track and Field — Wasilla, Palmer, Colony, Houston and Su Valley at Skyview Invitational

Contact Matt Tunseth at 352-2265 or matt.tunseth@frontiersman.com