Snowstorms force Northern Region to cancel basketball regular season

The WCAC may push back the City Title game, scheduled for March 7 at Verizon Center, to accommodate a backlog of postponed games. (Mitchell Layton/getty Images)

If the events cannot be held on Saturday, however, the region is looking into holding the event early next week at Washington-Lee pool in Arlington, probably as an athlete-only event because of limited space for spectators.

If that final plan falls through, the region likely would be forced to use the times and scores from the district and dual meets and swimmers with state qualifying times would advance. This would not allow swimmers with top-six finishes at the region meet to advance, but any swimmers already with state qualifying times would move forward.

Montgomery County swim teams were still planning on holding divisional meets on Saturday, which would keep them on schedule for the upcoming county and Metros championships.

In Loudoun, AA Dulles District activities directors met in Leesburg on Tuesday morning to consider plans for rescheduling the district swim and gymnastics meets and the Region II wrestling meet. They also discussed a strategy that would enable them to begin district basketball tournaments Feb. 17 in order to complete play by the Feb. 20 deadline for setting region tournament brackets. That plan could result in an early conclusion to regular season play.

Park View Activities Director Joe Breinig Jr., said late Tuesday afternoon the proposals were submitted to the principals of the district's schools and were pending approval from the administration and Superintendent Edgar B. Hatrick III.

"We hope to have a better sense of things by [Wednesday] afternoon, based on how much snow we get tonight," he said.

The one sport that may be impacted more than any other is wrestling, because conditioning is paramount and needs to be particularly precise as wrestlers try to make weight. Tuesday, the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association decided to formally move all regional duals to Feb. 16. Semifinals and finals at 5:30 and 7 p.m., respectively.

While it appears public schools will just push athletic events into next week, the region's private schools are hopeful that some contests still might be held.

Georgetown Prep is scheduled to host the 30-school Private School Invitational indoor track meet on Saturday. The Interstate Athletic Conference was supposed to wrap up its basketball regular season on Friday, with the league tournament scheduled to begin next Tuesday. Pushing back that tournament is a possibility, but it remains to be seen how to deal with any conflicts with other tournaments, such as the Sleepy Thompson or Virginia Independent Schools.

The IAC wrestling tournament, originally scheduled for this past weekend, tentatively is rescheduled for Monday at Georgetown Prep.

"We'll have to keep pushing back and see what we can squeeze in," Prep Athletic Director Dan Paro said. "No one knows. You've got to be patient."

Meantime, Washington Catholic Athletic Conference Commissioner Jim Leary said he has had discussions about postponing the league's postseason basketball tournament to allow more time to make up regular season games.

The league's tournament is scheduled to begin the last week of February, with championship games on March 1 at American University's Bender Arena. It also is possible, Leary said, that the City Title game could be pushed back from March 7, though that seems unlikely, since the game will be played at Verizon Center and securing an open date there can be difficult.