Another year, another entirely messed up fall prep sports slate.
To be fair, when boat-tossing hurricanes decide to turn the SS Minnows in Charlotte Harbor into art installations in Gilchrist Park, whaddaya gonna do?
District volleyball pairings will have been released by the time you read this today. If you have cell service and (gasp!) internet and you’re able to read this, then you’re a step ahead of me, despite the fact I’m toolin’ down the information highway.
It’s a sort of witchcraft that gets newspapers out at times like these. I don’t pretend to understand. I just slap my keyboard randomly and make words appear and then send them to other people who know what to do with them.
But it’s our duty to inform you regarding what’s going on with the local high schools. To that end, I spent Thursday visiting the various local high schools as I had done after Hurricane Ian.
(Reader’s note: I will not speak the name of this most recent gale. I refuse to acknowledge a tempest named after the “Office Space” stapler guy. Call it ‘fixing the glitch.’)
THE LOCAL SCHOOLS I was able to get to on Thursday — Charlotte, Port Charlotte, Lemon Bay and North Port — all have some minor damage, but nothing like Ian. All the football fields should be ready to roll in short order. North Port’s tennis courts will need new fencing. A soccer goal at Charlotte High is upside down and Port Charlotte is going to need new screens at the baseball field and some new Gatorade coolers, unless school officials can find the lids to the ones strewn between the football stadium and weight room.
Each of the three Charlotte County public schools received new football scoreboards after Ian. Only one — at Lemon Bay — had damage. The “Manta Rays” part of the scoreboard’s crown had been blown off.
I found the pieces and very helpfully put them together for whomever should find it. It’s on the goal line, by the long jump pit with the fish swimming in it.
There will be no football games this week, of course. That leads to a serious dilemma, and one that could wreck the area’s greatest rivalry.
Lemon Bay’s Jason Mensing and Charlotte’s Cory Mentzer suspect the answer to this week’s missed district games will be to cancel the remaining non-district games on their schedule.
For Lemon Bay, that means moving this week’s postponed Estero game to replace next week’s East Lee County tilt.
For Charlotte? That would me a one-year hiatus for the Peace River Rivalry. The Tarpons were supposed to play district foe Mariner this week. Likewise, the Pirates were playing Dunbar.
IF THE SEASON isn’t lengthened by a week (another option), then those non-district games really do have to go.
“I have no idea what to expect with the schedule or how the state’s going to try to squeeze in the district games,” Mentzer said.
If the season is not going to be extended by a week, then the only solution available to keep non-district games is to leave them in place and play an all-important district game on short rest.
That’s something no coach wants to do.
“The last conversation was the district game would be made up in lieu of East Lee on (next) Friday,” Mensing said in a text. “But that is not set or confirmed yet and likely won’t until we get our return to school date.”
That’s where Port Charlotte’s Jordan Ingman is at the moment — asking the powers that be when his team can return to the practice field.
The subtext in all of this: Now is not the time for games, period. The area’s coaches were still in the process of contacting their players, many of whom were still out of town after evacuating.
Mentzer checked on things at Charlotte High, found everything buttoned up and headed back home finish his own cleanup. He lives a stone’s throw from Charlotte High, so he and his family feared the worst from storm surge on Wednesday night into Thursday morning.
“It didn’t get to me,” he said. “It is everywhere around me and everywhere around the school.”
After Hurricane Helene’s passing, two Tarpons assistants and a few players were dealing with flooded homes. Those same families were inundated again on Wednesday night.
Further inland, DeSoto County High appeared to dodge a bullet.
“We are fortunate, certainly,” Bulldogs football coach Cliff Lohrey said.
Venice High was the school closest to the storm’s eye. School officials told Sun Preps sports writer Evan Lepak that damage to the school and facilities were minimal. A goal post was damaged, but beyond that, the only concern was when everything could get back to normal.
AS I ROAMED Gilchrist Park shooting photos for the newspaper on Thursday morning, I hazarded upon a beached boat resting against an “Authorized Vehicles Only” sign. In that moment, the only thought that came to mind was “any port in a storm.”
Farther down the harborwalk I came across wreckage-strewn Welcome Beach, a tiny spit of sand next to the empty space where the PG Waterfront Hotel used to stand. In the middle of all that wreckage, atop its Styrofoam packaging, sat a nearly pristine porcelain gingerbread house. The darndest things happen in hurricanes, but in that moment, all I could think was, “this, too, shall pass.”
A light bulb went off. I had discovered a new equation:
“Any port in a storm” plus “This, too, shall pass” equals “It’s All Alright!”
That last, grammatically curious phrase was written on a breaker box just off the harborwalk in front of Hurricane Charley’s restaurant. I came upon it at the height of the pandemic in 2020, right at sunset.
And wouldn’t you know, in time, everything was “all alright” … at least until the next calamity came along. That breaker box vanished with everything else in that area during Ian, but I know the sentiment lives on in all of us.
To steal from Ernest Hemingway when thinking back on that Manta Rays sign: The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
Despite the tumult, we do live in paradise. It might not seem that way right now, but it will again. Soon.
Be safe, everybody.
Patrick Obley is the sports editor of The Daily Sun. Email him at patrick.obley@yoursun.com
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