Mother Nature finally arrives

The fact that it's January 22 and it's the first night that a majority of basketball games are cancelled is actually impressive for Northeast Ohio. I can remember over the past few years, games got cancelled as early as December due to snow or the cold.

As calls were being made to see which schools were going to brave the cold and play their originally-scheduled games, it got a few people (including myself) thinking – how do some schools play and some schools don't when it comes to temperature closings?

Back in my day, the days of the late 1990s, if you didn't go to school, you didn't play in a game. Plain and simple. And that is still the rule at Champion High School, according to athletic director Tim Cope. According to Cope, it's in the policies of the school district that either home or away, if Champion doesn't go to school, Champion doesn't play.

However, I was informed that it is each school's separate policy on whether or not to play when it comes to a temperature issue. On Tuesday, Lakeview didn't have school but still took on the Poland Bulldogs.

Therefore, there's no simple explanation to why some schools do and don't play. It's all up to the schools by policies set in the beginning of the year.

And that's what I learned today. Tomorrow, I take on figuring out scheduling in the All-American Conference.