Being A Hostage Of The StormFor almost 30 years I have been instructing people on what to do, and what not to do, when lightning and severe thunderstorms approach.
I have chastised radio listeners for not going into an interior room located below ground level, for not staying away from windows, for taking a shower or bath when lightning is near and staying away from metal objects.
I have warned people what to do if they get caught outside, like staying away from trees and poles and other tall objects and like getting as low as possible.
I have a confession: I don’t follow my own warnings very often, and last Friday was my most recent violation.
Other than standing on a golf course with four iron in your hand raised high above your head, there can’t be any worse place to be in the middle of a lightning storm than in the press box of a high school football facility.
Those who get trapped in the press box when a game is delayed — which includes game workers, media members and sometimes assistant coaches — are generally in a metal box sitting on top of a metal structure with tall light poles on either side or right behind it (or both). You can’t really leave, because going down the aluminum bleachers surrounded by light poles is a bad idea. You are, in that moment, challenging that lightning not to strike you.
That is not a good life plan.
So you stay where you are and hope the storm passes quickly so play can resume.
But, like in the case of Friday, the storms never did move out and the game was delayed to Saturday.
Everyone was frustrated with the way Friday went down — at Goshen, where I was, and a lot of other places. But there was nothing anyone could do.
The IHSAA rules, handed down by the National Federation of High Schools, say when lightning is witnessed by school officials or the game referees, play is suspended immediately and everyone is evacuated from the field of play and stands to safety.
OK, most people. Someone who is associated with the host school is assigned a stopwatch, and that person stats that timer right away. Every time lightning is witnessed by that person or anyone in the press box, the reset button on the stopwatch is pushed and time starts over. The teams and fans are kept inside until that stopwatch gets to 30 minutes.
Half an hour is long time, but that assures that the lightning has sufficiently moved off.
Realistically, you are looking at a minimum of an hour between when a game is stopped and when it can resume.
You give creative-types like sports writers and broadcasters that kind of time, together, with no way out, and food … it can be really interesting.
Now, I am not at liberty to share much of what happened or what we talked about over the almost three hours we were up there. As I was reminded: “what happens in the Goshen football press box, stays in the Goshen press box.” Not that anything really happened that anyone would be embarrassed over. The exact opposite is true. We had a lot of fun. We laughed, we stared at our phones hoping that we’d discover some ray of hope in the latest radar images and we ate some of the best pulled pork I’ve ever tasted.
I can say that the lightning flashes were so numerous that calling out “lightning!” to help the school official monitor in the press box felt silly, but we did it anyway and then chuckled as we did it.
I can also honestly say that if I was going to get trapped with a group of people for that long anywhere, the group of people I was with on Friday night was about as good a group as you could ask for.
Friday was bad. A lot of homecoming ceremonies got ruined. A lot of plans for Saturday got changed and rearranged. A lot of game officials had to work multiple games because some high school officials were scheduled to do college games.
It’s the definition of making the best of a bad situation.
