Wintry Weather Postpones Games

A wintry blast of snow across the state forced the postponement of numerous regional basketball tournaments on Wednesday.

Arkansas schools in Class 4A and below are on their second week of tournament play with regionals this week. Teams in all classifications will open state tournament play next week.

The Greenland girls basketball team was scheduled to face Danville at 4 p.m. Wednesday in the opening round of the Class 3A Region 1 Tournament in Paris. Greenland is the defending Class 3A state champions.

But Lady Pirates coach Alan Barton learned Wednesday morning the start of the regional had been pushed back a day. Instead of making the 90-minute drive to Paris for a game, Greenland stayed in town and held a practice.

“Finding out that we’re not going to play today just gives us another day of getting shots in and just working on things that we always do,” Barton said.

Barton said Greenland is slated to play its game against Danville at 4 p.m. today, assuming that more winter weather doesn’t cause the road conditions to get worse and postpone the regional tournament another day.

“Whether we play today or tomorrow, it’s just like a tournament,” Barton said. “We’re just going to play it like that, and everything will be all right.”

The 4A-North regional in Maumelle was also postponed Wednesday. Four Northwest Arkansas teams were scheduled to play, including Prairie Grove’s girls at 4 p.m.

The 4A tournament will also push back a day, and officials are hoping to play games today.

Gentry girls coach Tim Rippy said his team had already left early Wednesday in hopes of beating the weather and was already on the road when it was announced te tournament had been postponed. Prairie Grove’s girls and Lincoln’s boys had done the same thing, while Farmington girls coach Brad Johnson said players were about to board the bus to leave.

“We were already down the hill and near Alma when we got the call,” Rippy said. “The roads were really starting to get bad at that time, but they didn’t want us to try to go back up the hill, either.

“We elected to go on down to Maumelle and stay in a motel. We arranged to have a workout at North Little Rock, so it shouldn’t affect us too much. We’ll just get ready to play.”

Additionally, the 2A Region I Tournament in Magazine was postponed and will start today. Decatur’s boys were scheduled to play today at 5:30 p.m., but that game will be moved to Friday.

Junior high teams competing in the regional junior high tournament in Fort Smith were also affected. The tournament is being played at Chaffin Junior High. Officials are hopeful games will be played today, but have also sent out a plan to start the tournament on Friday in two gyms.

The tournament championship games will be played on Monday.

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