This time last year, terms such as “contact tracing” and “quarantine” had yet to infiltrate the sports world.
The outbreak of the coronavirus obviously has affected athletic events at all levels, including the pushing of the 2020 Southern Conference football season into 2021. Yet nobody expected “winterizing” to become a Scrabble answer that’s currently applicable to Rusty Wright and his University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Mocs.
UTC’s original spring opener against visiting VMI this Saturday had to be postponed – canceled may wind up being more accurate – because of COVID issues within the Mocs program. Now it’s set for Feb. 27 against Wofford with only family members in attendance due to Finley Stadium being winterized, with larger crowds being allowed for UTC’s final two home games against Mercer on March 27 and Samford on April 10.
“The reason that it’s winterized is that when the temperatures drop below freezing for multiple days, the pipes start to blow like popcorn,” Finley Stadium executive director Chris Thomas said Tuesday afternoon. “February and early March is when most of the damage has occurred, to be honest, and I think one year we had like $40,000 worth of damage because of broken pipes and what not. It’s a real deal, and there is no way to prevent that other than blowing out the pipes and letting them be empty during that cold stretch.
“March 1 is when we feel that it begins to become safe, but Chattanooga’s had some pretty rough weather in March, too, so that’s not even guaranteed. We probably won’t have any water going until the week before the March 27 game.”