BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Jackson-Olin.
We learned that was possible last week. That circumstance came as a result of the lighting strikes that hit Birmingham on Oct. 10. It moved a lot of games to Saturday.Hueytown 6-0 when play was halted in the second quarter, but there wasn’t enough security staff available to resume play on Saturday.
That carried it over to Monday evening. It was even moved up 30 minutes before Birmingham City Schools made the decision to shut down after-school activities because of an impending weather element bearding down late Monday night.
Hueytown and Jackson-Olin eventually played three quarters last Tuesday night and turned right around and played another region game three days later. The Mustangs won 12-6. It was the first win in school history against Hueytown.
Hueytown Coach Scott Mansell is shown in Hueytown, Ala, Friday, Aug. 22, 2014. (Mark Almond/malmond@al.com)
Hueytown lost both games. It wasn’t ideal having to turn around and play the region champ with zero good days of practice to lean on. Coach Scott Mansell had his players in shells both days to try to get their legs back.
What’s the only thing worse than playing two games in three days with scant practice time? Try losing your quarterback on the first play of that second game. That happened to Hueytown.
“It was not a good situation period,” Mansell said. “It is something I hope no other coach has to go through ever again. You don’t want to try to try and prepare to beat the region champions on just two days. That was just an impossible situation to coach in, but I was the most worried about safety issues in playing those games back to back. … I made the statement on Friday night that this wasn’t going to be fair to our kids.”
Both coaches ironically had the game plans in for the second game by Sunday of that five-day scenario, but didn’t install them with their players until the next Wednesday. Both teams still had a game to play before then.
“The best advice I could give to any other coach facing that would be to make sure to avoid that situation if at all possible,” Mansell said. “It looked like our kids were in slow motion in that second half against Homewood.”
Each program had to cancel their junior varsity games that week. The rule book says no player can play more than two games in a week. Jackson-Olin held on to beat Hueytown 12-6 on Tuesday and lost a heartbreaker 17-12 to Walker last Friday and had a chance to win the game late.
Mustangs coach Tim Vakakes made the most of the situation. He leaned on the fact his players work every day in his program. They lift weights four days a week no matter what.
“We didn’t bring it up to our kids,” he said. “We don’t give our team many breaks at all. Physically it wasn’t bad for our kids. We had ice baths. We practiced in shorts for two days. This is a tough team. Yes, it wasn’t ideal, but we didn’t lose that second game because we weren’t physically ready.”
There’s another way to look at it. That’s from the player perspective. Ask any kid if he’d like to play two football games in three days and they’d likely rather do that than practice.
“The coaches sure dreaded it,” Vakakes said. “But to be honest with you I don’t know if the kids didn’t actually like chance to turn around and get to play again.”
p>Jeff Sentell covers prep sports for AL.com and the Birmingham News. Follow him on Twitter for the latest high school cool across Alabama.
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