A Francis Lewis player points to the spot on the Hunter College gym floor where the water fell from the ceiling. (Damion Reid)
A leaky pipe on the ceiling of the Hunter College gym forced the PSAL to postpone its Class A girls volleyball championship between Francis Lewis and Cardozo on Tuesday night. Both coaches and officials refused to play and PSAL administrators agreed to postpone the match to sometime after the Thanksgiving holiday – eventually.
“Safety is of the utmost importance,” PSAL director Donald Douglas said.
Initially, though, the PSAL deemed the wet court safe to play, according to Cardozo coach Danny Scarola. The Class B championship match, directly preceding the ‘A’ final, went off without a hitch, but coaches said the leak, from a pipe in an upstairs kitchen, got worse. A league worker was going to wipe down the small wet spot with a towel after every point, but coaches and referees said that wasn’t acceptable.
“That changes the momentum of the game,” Lewis coach Arnie Rosenbaum said.
The league’s first inclination was to force both teams to play Tuesday night and find new officials, Scarola and Francis Lewis co-athletic director Annette Palomino said. If not, both teams would have had to forfeit and no ‘A’ champion would have been crowned.
“They wanted a double forfeit,” Rosenbaum said. “That’s what made the decision harder.”
School principals, Ali Shama of Francis Lewis and Gerry Martori of Cardozo, spoke with Douglas, as did the officials, and he made the decision to postpone the match. The PSAL will post the date and location on its Web site, PSAL.org, sometime today.
“That’s not the appropriate response,” Shama said of a double forfeit. “It’s a championship game. If the lights go out in the gym, do you call a double forfeit?”
Douglas said that the decision was made when speaking to the parties involved and that the PSAL has the players’ best interest in mind. He denied the charge that a double forfeit was spoken about if the match wasn’t played.
“Of course, the league was concerned [about safety] also,” he said.
Hunter was unable to move the match to its basement auxiliary gym, because it was already occupied. Coaches suggested they turn off the valve on the leaky pipe, but school officials said there was no one on the premises who could do that, Douglas said. The league director said the match might be played at York College, the location of the last two finals, because both schools are from Queens.
The players and spectators in the packed bleachers were not kept informed and when public address announcer Alan Zarrow announced the game wouldn’t be played about 30 minutes after it was supposed to start, a roar went up from the crowd. The players, who had already finished warm-ups, were not happy, but they felt it was the right decision given the circumstances.
“We did want to play,” said Lewis star Alicja Pawelec, who was named an AVCA honorable mention All American yesterday. “Today we were so anxious. We were ready. But on the other hand, we didn’t want anyone to get hurt. The coaches and officials were right to postpone the game.”
Added Cardozo sophomore Ashley Grubler: “This was our day. We postponed everything in our lives for this.”