Karpe Diaz

I’ve been really trying to find a way to enjoy winter. I really have.
I don’t like the cold and snow, but I’ve realized that if I can’t find some sort of joy from the season, I will simply have to endure the season without joy. 
So I’ve been trying.
Winter sports are my favorite because of basketball (of course), so aside from all the nuisance that snow causes on a small scale, such as having to shovel your walks, ruining travel plans, making getting around on the streets treacherous, making my black (sigh) car dirty, and being accompanied by frigid temperatures, snow also really interferes with sports schedules!
Last year, the girls missed out on their opening weekend of hoops because of a crazy winter storm, and this year, both the boys and girls lost two pre-season games because of the blizzard that has been named Diaz.
I find the name a bit ironic, given that it is Hispanic in nature, therefore not a name one generally associates with a snowmageddon type of storm, but I’m not in charge of naming blizzards, so what do I know?
At any rate, as I watched the storm develop and dump all over the surrounding communities, I did find some happiness in the fact that we here in Newcastle — the banana belt — didn’t suffer like the Northern Hills. 
However, when your basketball schedule involves having teams from Belle Fourche and Lead, S.D., needing to travel on roads closed by mounds of drifted and blowing snow, it doesn’t matter how hard you got hit by the storm. They are simply not going to be able to get through the white stuff to get to the tournament.
So, on Thursday as I watched all of our winter sports’ weekend schedules get annihilated by Diaz — basketball, wrestling, and swimming — I was finding it extremely hard to find anything positive to say about winter.
I didn’t have to pout too long though, because the athletic directors quickly worked to save a bit of the weekend, and the varsity basketball teams were able to make up their Thursday game against Sundance on Friday, and some of the wrestlers were able to gate-crash the tournament in Wright on Saturday, so that was awesome.
And though the swimmers missed out on a couple of duals in Cheyenne over the weekend, they actually have a few competitions over the winter break, so all things considered, they will get plenty of action before school resumes in January.
With the resurrection of some sports activities over the weekend, coupled with the possibility of making up the missed basketball games, and the wrestling dual against Buffalo, I was finding it possible to try to get back into a positive state of mind about winter.
And then I looked at this week’s wrap up of standings for basketball…
Here we are, heading into nearly a three-week hiatus from the sport, and I’m looking at conference teams who have already played six, seven, or even eight games in preparation for the kick-off of conference games in January, while Newcastle has only played four.
Granted, it’s one more
game than the girls got last season prior to Christmas break, but it truly is frustrating to see Wheatland and Douglas going into the break with twice the number of games under their belts than either our girls or boys.
Obviously, there’s nothing that can be done about the gap between the games played by other teams and ours, so I’m going to try very hard to recognize the fact that we didn’t get hit that hard by Diaz, and that we got to make up a bit of what we missed, but I don’t know how successful I will be in being able to Karpe Diaz.