By Staff
Both sides looked at every scenario, but in the end the T.R. Miller Tigers are unable to reschedule their home varsity football game against the Jay (Fla.) Royals.
"Both of us really wanted to play the game and we looked at every scenario. Unfortunately none of them were good," T.R. Miller coach/athletic director Jamie Riggs said.
The Tigers were originally supposed to host Jay October 29 in what was then the regular season finale. However, Hurricane Ivan forced the cancellation of all of the state's week four games. The Alabama High School Athletic Association rescheduled those games for the week 10 spot and moved the week 10 games to the following week.
Instead of playing Jay on October 29, T.R. Miller must now play a region home game against Abbeville.
The problem with that decision was Jay already had a game scheduled for the following week, November 5, at Milton (Fla.) and was unavailable to play in Alabama's week 11.
T.R. Miller looked at the possibility of playing two games in week 10 as a way to play the Jay game.
"We looked at playing Jay on Thursday and Abbeville on Saturday. In the end, we thought it was too much for the players in such a short time," Riggs said. "All these headaches could have been avoided if the AHSAA had simply moved week four to week 11. Instead they moved two weeks."
The decision to cancel the Jay game left T.R. Miller with two options. It could find another school that also had an out-of-state opponent scheduled in the original week 10 or it could sit idle in week 11.
As it turns out, only two other Alabama schools are in the same situation. One of those is Escambia County, a school T.R. Miller played in week one (and won 42-6). Escambia County was scheduled to play Northview (Fla.) in Alabama's original week 10. Northview has a game scheduled against Baker (Fla.) the following week. The other option was Class 2A member Leroy, which was supposed to play West Florida.
"We didn't want to play Escambia County again and I wasn't interested in us playing Leroy. We're going to be off week 11," Riggs said.
The T.R. Miller-Jay series began last season when the Tigers notched a 31-16 victory in Florida.
"Even though we just started the series with Jay last year, I think it has quickly become a game both sides have gotten excited about. They've become a very good program down there and we were looking forward to playing them. Unfortunately we couldn't work it out," Riggs said.