Lights out
 

7 PM game last night, northern Minnesota, still daylight althought cloudy. State's # 1 team against an 0-2 team. Ten min. before game time, the lights and scoreboard go out. The home team is a co-op so a possible alternative is to move the game to the other town about 10 mi. away. Lights go on about 3 min. after 7 and we start the game. 3rd qtr, the lights go out on one side of the field. We meet with coaches and AD and decide to play on. Glad we did. Other lights go back on about 10 min later and the game was finished. Not easy doing a game looking into shadows but everyone was ok with it and the kids benefited by having the game continue. We should have asked the fans on one side of the field to turn on the lights of their pickups! ;)

I was in the booth timing a game last year with about 9:00 left in the fourth quarter when one light tree went down - it was in the corner of the end zone, and it seemed to me that the field was still playable, but most of the crew decided that they didn't want the potential liability... and once that word was uttered to the school's superintendent, he shut it down. :rolleyes:

Who was playing? I grew up in The Cities. Just curious.

FORSKREF, What did you mean when you said one team was a co-op? Never heard that term before when refering to a HS.

I'm a lighting nightmare waiting to happen!

1- Lights go out just as K1 is running up to kickoff to begin the game. Threw the breaker, started over 10 minutes later and played the game.

2- We take the field at 7pm, the lights and scoreboard go out at 7:10. They comeback on at 7:30, go off again 5 minutes later, for good. They move the game to the visitors on Saturday night.

3- Half the lights go out in the 2nd qtr. We have to come back on Monday to finish the game.

4- When we walk on the field, two poles are out on one side at one end of the field. Teams agreed to play anyway and they never came on.

That's 4 times in 5 years. Getting used to it. :)

"Co-op" means that it is a combined team from multiple schools or towns. For example, WAO is Warren-Alvarado-Oslo (three towns in Minnesota). Interestingly enough, sometimes there will be a co-op for one sport but not for others.

Co-op means more than one school district go together to form an athletic team, usually because the schools are too small to field one on their own. They remain independent in every other way. There are also consolidations where the two districts join and create one district for administration purposes. In ND, the towns are so small that they have as many as 4 or 5 schools form a co-op for 9-man football.

The schools were Stephen-Argyle, the number one team in the state and Red Lake County Central which is Plummer and Oklee.

I spoke with a supt. of a small district in ND and he said they had problems with the lights and breakers until they had an electrician install a fan inside the breaker box to reduce the temp. in there. I am going to call the school and suggest that they do that.