Windermere wins in 7 minutes; rescheduling no fun for coaches | Football Insider

I’ve been in this profession for 38 years and Monday night was a first for me. I headed over to Colonial High School, intrigued by the resumption of a Sept. 6 game against Windermere that was stopped with 6:58 of play remaining with Windermere leading 14-12.

It wasn’t enough that the two teams had to wait 31 days to finish the final seven minutes, but they had to wait even longer when the bus transporting Wolverines players across town ran late.

Updates on Week 8 Orlando area football schedule as Hurricane Milton develops

This is a common problem with Orange County Public Schools transportation system. No bus can be guaranteed to arrive for football pickup until 4:30, and they often don’t show up until much later. Few 6 p.m. games have started on time this season, and Monday was no different. Windermere arrived at 6:15 and the game started about 50 minutes late. It lasted about 20 minutes in real time.

Windermere players were on the bus longer than they were on the field.

There were 20 plays and only 21 yards gained. The victory was clinched for Windermere (6-0) when Bryce Speed — substituted into the game at cornerback during a timeout by Windermere coach Riki Smith — intercepted a pass thrown by Colonial (2-4) with 35 seconds left.

Windermere thought the Sept. 6 game was already considered a final. But Colonial never agreed to make the game official and eventually set the resumption date.

First-year Colonial coach Austin Rocheleau said his squad deserved to finish the game. Windermere had scored the go-ahead touchdown with 6:58 remaining, when lightning hit and stopped play.

“They score on the very last play and then lightning hits, so I’m going to do everything I can to give my kids a chance to win the game,” Rocheleau said.

Smith said he left it up to administrators to figure it all out.

“I told [the players] character is built through adversity,” said Smith, whose team has faced other obstacles, including waiting for the school’s home stadium debut after being delayed by two weeks. “I just let the powers that be handle it and I just focused on the team being 1-0 every week.”

The Wolverines are not eligible for the FHSAA playoffs. This is the first season for the OCPS independent division, a group of eight teams that, in the past decade and beyond, have been less competitive with the upper echelon of Orange County’s teams.

Those eight schools — Colonial (2-4), Cypress Creek (0-6), East River (3-3), Innovation (3-3), Lake Buena Vista (3-3), Oak Ridge (4-2), University (0-6) and Windermere — are facing each other, as well as three out-of-division games. The only postseason play they have to look forward to is a bowl game, should they meet the criteria, which requires a .500 record or better. At this point, five teams would qualify for bowl games, but with games remaining.

Smith was running backs coach at Dr. Phillips when the Panthers won the Class 6A state title in 2017.

“To go to the playoffs, and I’ve been blessed enough to win the title, it’s hard. They only make one key for that door,” Smith said. “Looking back on it, it would have been nice if this team would have been able to have the opportunity. But at the same time, just to see these guys and how happy they are at school and practice, knowing they can compete with anyone on their schedule, it’s a good feeling for them.”

Hurricane Milton is creating plenty of scheduling issues itself this week, with nearly every Week 8 game impacted. Private schools have a little more leeway. Bishop Moore’s game with Eustis is still tentatively in play for Friday as of the end of Tuesday’s school day. Administrators are holding off on any postponement decision.

Scheduling for power programs such as Jones and Lake Mary is already always difficult. Lake Mary had to schedule out-of-area teams Lakeland and North Miami Beach this season.

“When you’ve had success for several years in a row, a lot of teams around won’t play you,” Lake Mary coach Scott Perry said. “With the makeup games, fortunately for us, with Seminole this week, they are 10 minutes down the road, so that was easy. Logistically it was easy to move our busses and get everything done.”

Chris Hays can be found on X @OS_ChrisHays .