vhsguy

You're right, Mountain Man. Race Week has always wreaked havoc on the first week of high school football (for Tennessee or Virginia depending on the schedule) in Bristol. For the Bristol news media, the high school football season does not begin for real until the August races are finished. I did not get to attend the game that you are referring to, but I did get to listen to parts of it online. If I remember correctly, it was a pretty low-scoring, defensive game that we were able to pull out by making some field goals. It was the kind of nip-and-tuck game in which a long delay could easily become a momentum changer.

As a VHS fan, I apologize to the Tazewell players, coaches, parents, and fans for this annoying inconvenience. It really bothers me that we continue to do this to visiting teams. This happened to Tazewell another time two years ago. And it seems that I recall it happening to Graham a few years ago as well. This could possibly have been avoided through proper coordination between VHS's AD and the Bristol Pirates. However, it is ultimately the Bristol Pirates that determine their own schedule. In addition, no member of the Bristol City Government or School Board is going to risk antagonizing a paying tenant by pressing the issue too much. I do not think that the 1-hour delay is motivated by a desire to increase attendance by allowing spectators from the Pirate's game time to walk over to Gene Malcolm. But rather it is due to the fact that visiting football teams use the same locker room as the visiting baseball teams. Visiting football teams also tend to use the baseball field for some drills and pre-warm-up activities. Also 50kw is correct that foul balls do often land in the north end of the football field. As for why the game was not moved to Saturday, I assume that the Tazewell AD preferred that his football team lose an hour of recovery time to the following week's opponent (Graham?) than to lose almost an entire day. Once again I am very sorry about this delay. And I wish both teams a safe and competitive game.