Story by Chris Lawrence
Organizers of the City of Charleston’s host committee for the high school football championships are attempting to make contingency plans amid the uncertainty of the high school football playoffs.
Charleston’s University of Charleston Stadium is due to host the four championship matchups Dec. 6-7. However, with pending litigation, it’s unclear if the first games will be played this weekend.
It’s possible the entire playoffs will be pushed back an entire week or more.
Charleston Convention and Visitors Bureau President and CEO Tim Brady said so far they believe all of the plans they made can be moved forward a week, but the complications become much steeper.
“The good news for us locally is all of the plans we have put into place to make this a really great experience for the teams and fans coming to Charleston are all still in play. The delay doesn’t change any of the plans we’ve made, it just pushes them back a week,” said Brady in a conversation with MetroNews.
If the playoffs get pushed back a week, which appears likely, Brady believed they would still be able to accommodate the teams and provide all of the planned events to celebrate the eight teams who will have made it to title weekend. The complications however start to mount since that would conflict with the same weekend of the state high school cheerleading competition across town at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center.
“Now you’re adding even more layers of logistics and potential complications into the mix,” said Brady.
Court action has also impacted the girls state high school volleyball tournament which starts Tuesday at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center. Due to the pending litigation, the Class A tournament has been delayed indefinitely. The WVSSAC plans to move forward with the Class AA, AAA, and AAAA competition with no certainty of when the small schools championship games can be played.
“As soon as volleyball is over, Ringling Brother’s Barnum and Bailey Circus moves into town for a couple of weeks and immediately after that, Trans-Siberian Orchestra plays on December 5 in Charleston. As you start pushing things back, finding available dates to play one classification of a volleyball tournament becomes difficult,” he said.