A break in the weather will allow the Great Plains Athletic Conference softball tournament begin this afternoon. The tournament is being held in Sioux City.
GPAC commissioner Corey Westra says they were lucky that there was more snow than rain and feel lucky to be playing. He says the ability to play four games at one time at the Sioux City complex will allow them to stay on schedule.
“When you do get playing, you do tend to get things playing pretty fast,” Westra says. Westra says they have some room in the schedule and if needed they could finish the tournament on Monday. Northwestern, Morningside and Briar Cliff are part of the eight team field.
Officials with the Midwest Collegiate Conference are looking at various options as they try to get the league’s baseball tournament in Waterloo completed. MCC Commissioner Rick Sanders says today’s game between Grand View and Mount Mercy has been moved to Cedar Rapids Xavier High School.
Sanders says he is looking at staying in Cedar Rapids, going back to Waterloo or evening moving games to the Quad Cities over the next couple of days. He says they are just trying to find a field that is playable and available.
Sanders says he wants to have options in case more bad weather moves in. He says when he started looking at the possibilities and forecast, he decided they needed a lot of flexibility.
William Penn, St. Ambrose and Viterbo of Wisconsin are the other teams still remaining. Sanders wants a champion crowned by Saturday night by midnight. Sanders says dealing with the weather is nothing new but dealing with this much weather is,
“In my 10 years as commissioner of the NCC, we’ve had more minor weather issues on some of our tournaments, but we’ve never experienced something like this,” Sanders says. But he says that’s the reality of playing northern baseball.
The weather has forced the Iowa Conference to make adjustments to three of its championship events that will be held in Cedar Rapids. The men’s tennis tournament on Friday and Saturday has been moved indoors and the start of the Iowa Conference softball tournament has now been pushed back to Saturday and it will now be single elimination.
Iowa Conference Commissioner Chuck Yrigoyen says they will have 2 first round games Saturday as they try to set a format that will be successful instead of trying to cram all the games in. He says the tournament needs to be completed on Sunday night
The men’s golf championship will be pushed back one day. The third round will be on Saturday at the Elmcrest Country Club and the final round will be Sunday in Iowa City.
Yrigoyen calls it a unique situation for the conference. “The consensus is that nobody’s ever seen something quite like this,” he says. But he says everyone has worked hard to do what’s best for the athletes.