Weather Policy

I'm sure many of you have looked at the forecast and have wondered, "Will Coach Greg really have practice tomorrow?" I haven't shared my policy on weather and how I arrive on cancellations so here goes.

• Inclement Weather: - defined as lightning in the area. As Hillwood and other middle school facilities lack lightning detectors, the policy is taking cover inside of the school or parent's (authorized carpool parents included) cars upon seeing a lightning strike. For most cases, thunder doesn't always justify a delay in either practice or a game but it's a good indicator. If we have lightning in the area (up to 10 miles away), we'll call the practice/game or wait the requisite 30 minutes from the last lightning strike.
• Rain: - I'm a Seattle boy (yep, northerner) so a little bit of rain doesn't faze me. However, most fields here in north Texas aren't equipped to handle a ton of rain without some time to settle, run off and dry. The root system is shallow and playing on the fields after hard and plentiful rains (or during) can cause field damage and lead to future player injuries. Also, most player's don't have sufficient "mudders" to allow them to play safely in these conditions. Heavy rains = practice cancellation whereas light rain = play on.

Communicating cancellations is tricky since I'm not with your players during the day as the athletic coaches are. I'll look into some sort of communication via the office and announcements as Ms. Eckert has been very accommodating thus far and since it's a safety concern I think she may be able to help. If in doubt, SMS me (please send me a separate e-mail to get my mobile as I don't really want to post it here).

Also, there is a free SMS service that allows me to group message anyone I set up in the group. If you'd like to be included in that group, please send me any numbers you want added to the group and I'll set this up this weekend. Please indicate whether the number is a student number or a parent number. I can set up a group with up to 50 participants so I may need to create 2 groups, 1 for parents and 1 for players. This is an opt-in only group message system so if you don't wish to receive messages, you don't have to do anything.

Lastly, I'm looking over tomorrow's forecast and it's looking pretty dismal. As with Texas weather, it's hard to estimate if it will blow over of dump on us. I'll make a decision on tomorrow's practice by tonight so please check your e-mail/this site tonight. If I haven't posted anything, please check back in the morning to be safe.