No contingency plan for state cross country meet?

We all had our plans set for Nov. 3 in Hebron for the OHSAA state cross country meet.

Some of you had hotels booked.

Some of you have been planning this for months.

Some of you may even have been planning to drive from out of state to watch the meet.

Then the news came that the OHSAA state meet was postponed from Nov. 3 to Nov. 10 at National Trail Raceway in Hebron because of flooding.

I saw the pictures of the course.

It’s fully understood that the course was too flooded to run on. That isn’t the issue.

My biggest gripe was the OHSAA not having a backup plan in place.

It’s the beginning of November in Ohio. Shouldn’t they have a plan in place for bad weather?

You would think, if anything, they can have planned backup at Hedges-Boyer Park on the Tiffin course, which holds the largest meet in the country every year.

Parking won’t be an issue because it has no problem hosting the largest meet every year.

Changing the location isn’t ideal, but keeping the meet on the same day would still generally have made people pleased. And there’s this. The athletes peaked in their training the week of the state meet and their training was ruined because of the decision.

Many of those same athletes had plans to run in the Midwest Nike National meet scheduled on Nov. 11 in Terre Haute, Indiana, 400 miles from Hebron.

That meet can attract college interest for the athletes if they do well.

Now those athletes have to choose between the state meet or that.

I get that frustration.

I’ve wrote in the past on how the OHSAA needs to be more firm with its decision of postponing track and field meets during bad weather in order to protect the athletes.

I am the No. 1 advocate for student-athletes’ safety.

I’d be a hypocrite now to throw that same logic away for cross country. However, that doesn’t mean a backup plan shouldn’t be in place where you could have a course ready to go on a less flooded course.

If that backup course was also flooded — then fine, I think any reasonable person would understand postponing it a week.

But the OHSAA did everyone no favor — especially the athletes, by not having a contingency plan in place.