Due to sudden forecast changes, the Homecoming football game was moved from Friday, Oct. 24, to Thursday, Oct. 23 while all other Homecoming events remained scheduled for Friday.
“On Monday it looked like there was going to be rain Friday night at 10 p.m., and that stayed the same through Tuesday,” Associate Athletic Director Josh Friesen said. “Wednesday morning the forecast started to shift and all the bad weather started to get here earlier and earlier.”
With the unpredictable weather encroaching, Friesen and the athletic department immediately began coordinating with Houston’s Episcopal High School (EHS) and other Dallas-area schools. After discussing multiple options, the schools mutually agreed that the safest and most time-efficient option would be to host the game on Thursday at 6 p.m., an hour earlier than the usual starting time.
Because EHS traveled from Houston, their limited flexibility was one main factor behind the scheduling change.
“If it had been a local team, we would have kept it on Friday…knowing that if we couldn’t finish it, we could do that Saturday morning or afternoon,” Friesen said. “But since it was a team coming up from Houston, we had to play it safe.”
Although the football game was rescheduled, no other Homecoming activities or events were adjusted, leaving the Homecoming pep rally on Friday as originally planned. Student body secretary Ilan Gunawardena said this was largely due to potential assessment conflicts as well as a modified schedule due to the pep rally.
“Optimally we would have wanted to keep the game on Friday,” Gunawardena said. “But unfortunately due to the masses of tests and assessments happening on the Friday, and the special schedule as well, it wouldn’t have been convenient for the teachers to shift around their entire day just to make space for the pep rally were it on Thursday.”
Despite the logistical issues, Gunawardena believes the pep rally still managed to hype the student body ahead of the rivalry game against the ESD Eagles on Oct. 31.
“I think having the pep rally on Friday, even though the game had already happened on Thursday, was almost the perfect setup for our game next week against ESD,” Gunawardena said. “They are, in my opinion, a much bigger rival than whoever we played on Thursday. If anything, it wasn’t a terrible experience at all.”
