As much as lightning and torrential rains have wreaked havoc with the high school football schedule early this year, perhaps no school in Southwest Florida has been impacted as much as South Fort Myers.
Two home games washed out in the past month have cost the school as much as $14,000 in revenue, as well as important preparation for district games.
South Fort Myers athletic director Bill Blakemore estimated last weekend’s washed out contest with East Lee County cost the school $9,000-$10,000 in ticket, parking and concession revenue.
That’s on top of the $3,500-$4,000 in parking and concession revenue he said the school lost when it had to shift its preseason game against Barron Collier to Naples three weeks ago because of heavy rains. The schools shared ticket revenue in that contest.
Blakemore said it’s too early in the season to determine if the school will have to cut costs because of the losses.
“We have money put aside in past years in case something like this happens,” Blakemore said. “Hopefully the revenue the rest of the football season will be high enough that it will take care of the expenses the rest of the year.”
A disproportionate amount of rain in the past month has left South?s saturated field no time to drain, said Blakemore and football coach Grant Redhead.
Redhead said it rained nearly 23 straight days at the school through last weekend, with Friday the third straight day of heavy storms.
Blakemore said the school?s principal told him the rain gauge at his nearby home showed four inches of rain on Friday, when there was ankle-high water on the outer thirds of the field.
?We just got an unfair share,? said Blakemore, noting the drainage grates at the outer corners of the field that already were filled to the top before Friday?s evening downpour. ?The (rain) couldn?t drain off Friday night. It was full. The water didn?t have anywhere to go for 12 hours.?
Two more storms Saturday kept the field thick with water, forcing the cancellation of the non-district game with East Lee for safety reasons and to protect the turf, Blakemore said.
?You don?t want to just tear up your field in the second week of the season when you?ve got eight more weeks, nine more weeks to go and not be in a playable condition down the road,? Blakemore said. ?(If) we?ve got no grass left in just two weeks, it would have been a mud pit.?
Redhead said a muddy field is a safety concern because players? legs can stick in the muck when making plants and not give when they?re hit.
?It wasn?t worth getting one of their kids out for the season or one of ours,? Redhead said of calling off the game on Saturday afternoon. ?You can fix a field but you can?t fix a kid that quick. If it was a district game, we would have been making it up (Monday).?
Redhead said the cancellation cost his team valuable repetitions at game speed. But he said the 23-2 exhibition win over Barron Collier paid dividends, and he expects Thursday?s home game against improved Cypress Lake to further sharpen his squad for its District 3A-11 opener next Friday against Bishop Verot.
That?s provided, of course, that the dry weather that South Fort Myers enjoyed Sunday and Monday continues this week.
?It was a lot better today,? Redhead said on Monday. ?Two days without rain is a huge difference.?
South Fort Myers opened in 2005.
Reggie Snell, director of construction services for Lee County Schools, said South Fort Myers? field is among the best in the district in terms of quality of turf and maintenance, which is handled by the school. That?s according to Sonny Jungferman, district supervisor of equipment and sites for maintenance services.
?There?s nothing wrong with the football field. It drains relatively well,? Snell said. ?Probably 20 years ago they play that football game. But today everybody is trying to protect the high school athlete. They?re going to err on the side of caution.?