Not only have teachers and students fallen behind on their lessons, but extracurricular activities have had to reschedule a lot of their events and practices due to the snow. So far, big events such as Science Fair, swim and dive team regionals, wrestling regionals and the Mr. Annandale performance could not take place on their original date. As a result these events had to postpone to a later date.
Science fair had suffered the greatest negative impact of all due to the snow. The fair was supposed to be on Friday, Feb. 5, but because of the snow days, it had to be rescheduled to Friday, Feb. 19.
Chemistry teacher and head of the Science Fair Isaac Boakye said, as a result of the rescheduling, “We’ve lost so many judges because we had them committed ever since September and now they have other commitments.” The fair is running so low on judges that “we are emailing teachers from other schools [to judge] because teachers at Annandale can’t make it on Friday,” said Boakye.
Another conflict with the postponement of Science Fair is that it now will start at 1:40 p.m. rather than after school. Since D lunch ends at about 12:30 p.m., this does not leave much time for the custodians to clean the cafeteria thoroughly before it is time to set up for the fair. According to Boakye, depending on the amount of judges they have, the fair may last up to 2 hours rather than the intended one hour. As a result, things may get chaotic.
Unfortunately, the science department is not the only one dealing with inconvenient rescheduling. Regional wrestling was originally marked for Thursday and Friday, Feb. 11 and 12, but had to be delayed until Feb. 16 to 17. Since the county only allowed two days for practice, the wrestlers’ performance was affected, especially with the state tournament right around the corner.
“We could have done better [in JV regionals] but the two days of practice we had were extended. We don’t have somebody to watch what we eat during the break, so we gain a lot of pounds,” said freshman wrestler Rahe Chowdhury.
Head wrestling coach, Keith Sholders said the wrestlers “need to maintain a certain weight, and having no practice also hampers with the chemistry [between players] in team sports as well as individual sports like wrestling.”
Fortunately for the basketball teams, no important tournaments were missed, but practice was limited. Like wrestling, they only had two practices during the snow days, but it did not seem to affect their performance since the girls and boys varsity teams won the first game they played after coming back from the two-week break. Senior varsity basketball player Joe Turner explained that he didn’t think the lack of practice affected the team’s performance because “winning the game yesterday [on Feb. 16] showed that even though practice was limited, we still play hard.”
Others thought that it was important to have as much practice as possible in order to improve. “Having the two practices helped because we were out of shape and needed our touch back. Our shooting skills went down,” said sophomore Hailey Brown.
As for the swim team, their situation is by far the least impacted by the snow. Regional swim and dive was originally intended to take place from Wednesday to Sunday, Feb. 3 to 7. The girls had to reschedule to Thursday, Feb. 4 and the boys put off until Monday, Feb. 15. However, lack of practice did not necessarily have any negative effect on the performance of the swimmers. Head coach Neal Jarvis said, “We had best times at regionals.”
Mr. Annandale, an annual event that takes place in the auditorium, could not go on as scheduled. It was supposed to be on Thursday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. Now the date for Mr. Annandale is Tuesday, March 9, and will be held in the auditorium at 7:30 p.m. According to marketing teacher and SGA sponsor Stephanie Thompson, “we pretty much missed all our rehearsals but we’re all set for the event.”
With all the confusion about dates, times and events, at least one thing is for sure: The snow is to be blamed for the chaotic atmosphere that has impacted everyone at AHS in some way.
