This year Mount Vernon along with many other schools had a significant amount of snow days. We have had three early dismissals, two late starts, and 10 days of no school all due to the weather.

In result of this many school activities were canceled or delayed including both boys and girls basketball, wrestling, and speech events. This is a huge amount of missed opportunities for practices that could be vital to some situations. “I believe we lost some opportunity there to really focus on getting better and especially with all the games we missed,” said junior basketball player Nolan Brand.

In the sum of two weeks, the winter sports got around seven practices for a two-week span. This makes a huge difference in the team’s overall performance. And I also understand that we come to school to learn but every teacher at Mount Vernon encourages you to get involved. So students do but when situations like these happen it can really mess up someone’s season.

No one can predict mother nature and every student knows that the administrators are just looking out for our safety but after so many snow days and not being able to go to your practice gets frustrating.

Both girls and boy basketball teams, along with wrestling, all found ways to get in time to workout on those days of no school but they didn’t have their coaches which is a huge downfall.

To solve this problem I propose a solution that would be allowing sports to host an optional practice that you only have to attend if you are able to. Being able to have an optional practice would make it safe for students because it would be optional so you only have to come if you can make it or want to. It would make it so that the winter teams are not set behind in their skills because of the loss of practice.

“Allowing an optional practice is one of those things where if you aren’t able to make it the coaches completely understand,” said senior wrestler, Ryan Clark. This gives a nice and safe solution for athletes and coaches.