Surry County sports are suffering from a major case of bad weather blues. With the recent winter blast coming at perhaps the most inconvenient time for basketball, swimming and wrestling, schools and teams are being forced to drop games, sacrifice revenue and play a grueling schedule just to try to finish the winter season.

Most schools (minus North Surry) had scheduled make up games from this past week for Saturday afternoon, only to have to reschedule yet again because of Thursday and Friday’s precipitation.

With the bad weather some basketball teams are being forced to play up to four games over this next week.

In Pilot Mountain, East Surry has already been forced to drop an away game against Elkin and a home game against East Wilkes. The Cardinals are scheduled to play Starmount next Friday at home, but if more weather comes across the mountains, that, too, could be a wash.

East Surry Athletic Director Barry Hall said should his school lose two home games it could mean a loss of more than $3,000 in revenue, something which he says is “tough on the athletic budget.”

Pilot Mountain also is scheduled to host the Northwest 1A/2A Conference basketball tournament, which is set to tipoff next Monday.

Hall said he and the other athletic directors in the conference have been in contact with the conference commissioner and will “try our best to do everything we can to have the conference tournament.”

“We’ve already been talking to the commissioner of our conference about some of the things we might could do,” Hall said. “Instead of using the two nights for the semifinals we could use different sites and we could do away with the play in game, so you can do some things. One year we brought only the top four teams. This is not the first time this has happened and won’t be the last.”

As host of the conference torment, East Surry would be entitled to the concession revenue for the week-long event which brings in players and fans from all over the conference, and a shortening or altering of the tournament would mean more lost revenue, not only for the Cardinals but for the conference itself.

The Northwest 1A/2A Conference wrestling tournament scheduled for Saturday afternoon also was canceled and the 1A/2A regional swimming tournament originally set to take place in Charlotte was scrapped.

Teams from the area are not pleased with the NCHSAA’s decision to drop the 1A/2A meet but reschedule both the 3A and 4A meets for early this week.

Area swimmers will now be subject to a stop watch to determine if they are eligible for the state meet next Saturday because without the regionals to determine the state meet lineup, an automatic bid time will be set in each event, sending home some swimmers before they even had a chance to get in the water.