Metro East Regional Chaos

Just a little sidenote from College Regionals coverage. The Metro East D-I Regional tournament was originally scheduled for this weekend, April 25-26. But over last weekend, the tournament was rescheduled for the following weekend, May 2-3, a normal move to account for weather and field conditions.

But then just two days ago, the tournament was switched back to April 25-26, leading to a lot of teeth-gnashing. We heard complaints from a number of teams and were even cc’ed on an angry email to the tournament director and USA Ultimate about the change. “The decision to move the event back to May 2-3 was made prematurely and many teams were inconvenienced by the decision,” wrote USAU Manager of College Competition Ty Krajec in an email to teams. “When it was determined that the fields for the event were playable this weekend the decision was made to revert back to the original weekend (April 25-26) since most teams had been planning for their attendance for several weeks and this would not require them to alter those plans.”

Teams scrambled to, in many cases, remake new hotel reservations and travel plans.

Then, today, just a few minutes ago, the date was switched back to May 2-3 because of rain and snow at the polo grounds field site in Middletown, NY.

“Unfortunately I am contacting you with unwelcome news,” wrote Krajec in an email. “We were doing our best to work with the field providers to play this weekend on the original date, however after speaking with the fields today, Middletown, NY has had torrential downpours, thunderstorms and snow since Tuesday when we originally decided to hold the event this weekend. Everything was done within our power to make this weekend work without changing to next weekend, however the fields are now unplayable and the event needs to be rescheduled to May 2-3.

“We know this is another huge inconvenience for all involved, and we assure you that we did everything in our power to not change the date of the event again, however the weather over the past 48 hours has made that impossible. For that we sincerely apologize. We are fortunate that we have a backup date in place for just such an occasion, although we absolutely tried our best to ensure we didn’t have to utilize it.”

Yikes.