Two weekends ago there were scheduled events for basketball and girls swimming, but both were cancelled due to inclement weather.
Four girls on varsity girls swim and dive (Delaney Bartels, Mary-Jane Flemming, Jaina Daniels, and Emma Nolan), were supposed to go down to a big swim meet called the COMO Invite at the Mizzou Aquatic Center on Friday, Jan. 10. But due to the snow, the school district wouldn’t allow the girls on varsity to go down.
How this meet works is that varsity prelims is Friday night, Saturday morning is JV and then later that Saturday is varsity finals.
Originally, there were about 45-50 teams that were supposed to go to Columbia, but only about 20 teams showed up because of the weather.
“I honestly was very upset I couldn’t go down,” varsity athlete Delaney Bartels (10) said. “COMO is a big meet that has good competition, and I was not able to have that extra push close to state.”
Because of this, varsity girls did get the opportunity to go down Saturday for JV to swim, but the competition just wasn’t up to that level because it is JV. The varsity girls were placing first and second consistently, but because they were varsity, they were able to swim but the times did not count. As a result, they didn’t get points for the team because they were an exhibition. They did this so that it wouldn’t be unfair for the JV swimmers.
Bartels swam the 100 back and finished first with a time of 1:04 and second place got 1:14 that is a whole 10 sec difference, which accentuates the difference between the JV competition is to the varsity.
“Even though I won by 10 seconds, I still got to compete and try to get better times. I used it as a practice and you usually don’t get to practice meets, so it was worth it. I also got to have fun with my team which is always worth it,” Bartels said.
This meet was a great opportunity for varsity girls to get faster and for good times and to be matched up with swimmers with the same times to get better times so that they have chances of going to state.
Jaina Daniels (10), who is on varsity, said “this meet is different from others because the facility and pool are both beautiful and the competition is always amazing, and just the overall atmosphere of the meet is fun and competitive.”
Girls swim only has a couple meets that are big competitions like this, so now being able to attend one of the big meets is not ideal especially this close to state.
This meet is different from other meets. “It’s different because there are so many more teams and more breaks in between. Rather than a dual meet with no competition, this meet provides so much of that,” Bartels said.
This meet would have been a good time to get the best times. But due to inclement weather, the girls lost that opportunity.

“I do think that girls swim being a winter sport causes more cancellations because of the snow days and unsafe driving conditions,” Daniels said.
Also on Friday the girls basketball team was going to travel down to Indiana for a Pacers game and a tournament, but that also got canceled due to inclement weather.
The tournament was going to be played in the Hoosier Gym. So they had a great opportunity to go watch a professional basketball game and participate in a tournament but they couldn’t because of the weather.
And due to the weather, basketball couldn’t practice so they missed out on a week of training and trying to get better for the end of the season.
With these sports being in winter, it causes there to be a lot of cancellations of games, meets, and practices which isn’t the best especially when it is toward the end of the season.
Spring and fall sports still have some cenacellaitons for like rain, but not as much as winter sports have.
Do you think these cancellations in winter sports impact the overall season?