Safety Questions

What about lightning, storms and weather cancellations?

Football is a sport that spans weather extremes; We play in the heat of summer and the cold of early winter. Plan to practice and play. Assume we will practice and play. Unless you are notified by your coach or Team Mom, you should expect that there will be practice/game at the regularly scheduled time.

The one case that practices/games will be delayed is for sighted lightening at the park. In the case of a lightening sighting, the following steps should be taken:

1. Anyone who sights lightening should immediately notify the closest coach, board member or concessions stand manager to announce the sighting to the all teams in the park.
2. Concessions Stand Managers should make a public address announcement, noting the time of the last sighting.
3. Immediately upon notification/sighting, coaches must have their teams exit the fields and seek the best shelter available. Shelter should be cars with their parents or authorized SVJFAC coaches or Team Moms, or a picnic pavilion or concessions stand. In the case of pavilions, the children should stay as close to the middle of the shelter as possible.
4. Under no circumstances should the children simply exit the field and then remain next to the fences or the bleachers.
5. Teams will be permitted to return to the fields when lightening has not been sighted again in the area for thirty minutes from the last sighting. The Concession Stand Manager will monitor the time and make an “all clear” announcement. For teams on remote fields, such as Dance across from the tennis courts, football behind the volleyball courts, on GPX and Linder, coaches on site must monitor the weather closely and follow the same guidelines.
6. In the event lightening has been sighted within forty-five minutes of the end of practice, practice will be cancelled for the evening.
7. If practice is forced to be cancelled from an early lightening sighting and a continuation of sightings throughout practice, the Association may seek to hold practices on an otherwise “off night” to make up for the lost time.
8. Teams should have a pre-determined rally location for pick-ups in the event of early cancellation.

Other cases in which practices or game may be delayed are for extreme weather conditions or otherwise unplayable field conditions or for regional or national emergencies.

In recent years, the Association has experienced challenges with field conditions due to excessive rain from hurricanes. Other teams within the league in which we play experience flooding due to the same weather patterns. In those situations, we found ourselves in the position of needing to postpone games by a week and to alter our practice schedule.

We will do everything that we can, given our limited access to field space and other time constraints, to ensure that our players are as well prepared as their competition going into games.

For games, we will also delay games due to lightening in the area and follow the same timelines. In the event that lightening delays a particular game by more than hour, we reserve the right to cancel that game in order to enable the later games on the schedule to not be delayed to an extraordinary extent.

Cheerleading and Dance may have slightly different thresholds for postponing or canceling practices, by they will not less strict regarding the “lightening” policy outlined above.