Days are days. No matter if they are regular run-of-the-mill everydays or holidays.
According to the IHSA, this is the way it dictates when a high school within its athletic association can schedule games.
Traditionally, no high school games during the school season are scheduled on Sundays and/or holidays. However, according to IHSA Assistant Executive Director Matt Troha, the discretion for scheduling up to the state series is reserved for the individual schools.
"The playing on Sunday thing is a great myth, no rules against it, nor against playing on holidays," he said. "Historically, we don't schedule state series events on Sundays, but schools are free to play on Sundays if they wish."
Virtually no games are scheduled on Sundays during the school year, let alone on Easter. Wednesday is also a traditionally light day of sports action, though there are exceptions to the rule. The Southwest Prairie, Conference plays three-game series' during the school year Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday games wrapped around travel tournaments at this time of the year are also not uncommon.
"Wednesday is traditionally a day where you don't schedule a lot of games because kids have CCD classes and things like that," Morris Athletic Director George Dergo said. "But if you look at it, the are cheerleading and poms events scheduled on Sundays and in the summer the kids wrestle and the softball teams schedule on Sundays. It's just when everyone's got off."
For the longest time, many assumed that the IHSA didn't allow Sunday contests. This due to the fact that three times since 2006, state series events were cut short by poor weather. In 2006, rain forced the IHSA to cancel the third place game involving Minooka's baseball team rather than allow the teams to play it on Sunday. Instead both were awarded third place trophies.
In 2008, the Coal City baseball team had a rain-shortened loss handed to it at state. Even the 2010 state champion Coal City softball team won a rain-shortened championship rather than play out the run of the entire tournament, even if it meant playing into Sunday.
There were reasons for those particular decisions, though.
"Currently, no IHSA state series events are scheduled to be played on Sunday. There is no by-law in place that would prevent a sport advisory committee from recommending a state series schedule change that would include Sunday contestsh however, based on the history of traditionally not playing on Sunday, it would seem unlikely to be approved by the IHSA Board," Troha said.
"Because not scheduling contests on Sunday predates all of our current staff, I can't speak to the exact thought process behind making state series schedules that did not include the option of Sunday contests, but can imagine it took into account many factors.
"The shortened games mentioned could not have been moved to another day (Sunday or otherwise), as we have rules in our postseason terms and conditions for all sports that declare when a game becomes an official game. If a game has reached that point, as those two did, unless the game is tied, then it is final and can't be completed on another day."
On Good Friday this year — a religious holiday for Christians — the Morris baseball team played Champaign Centennial.
"We've always played the Saturday before Easter, so playing on the Friday before doesn't resonate with us like it may other programs," Morris coach Todd Kein said. "They (Centennial) contacted us because they wanted to add some new competition to their schedule. Our schedule this week was supposed to be Tuesday, Friday and Saturday but we had to move Tuesday's game with Wilmington to earlier in the season because they had a conflict. Instead we're just playing Friday and Saturday this weekend."
Dergo said that he didn't know the game was scheduled on Good Friday this spring because of how early in April Easter falls this year.
"I didn't know that it was Good Friday when we scheduled the game. I understand it's a holiday but the actual day of the game depends on where Easter falls," Dergo said. "Then the schedule changes and you don't have a game. When the Easter weekend changes, sometimes you have a game and sometimes you don't. Good Friday is usually an open date, but that's the way the schedule fell."
Easter weekend fluctuates from year to year, typically ranging from late March to late April. Morris did not have a Friday game scheduled the week before or the week after Good Friday this spring.
"I don't see any problem with it. It's Easter weekend and there are no games on Sunday," Morris senior pitcher Jake Olson said. "Sunday's when you get to spend time with the family and everything. I actually like that we're playing because my brother (Ben) is here this weekend and he gets to watch us play."
While Morris is playing on Good Friday, one of the things that the Redskins did take into consideration was the time the game was going to be played. First pitch for the game was at 1 p.m., allowing the ballplayers and the teams' fans alike to attend evening church services after the game.
"That's part of the reason we had the game at 1 p.m.," Kein said. "It's also Centennial's spring break, as it is ours, and taking everything into consideration, we wanted to play it in the day."
Dergo agreed, adding that churches in the area also have Saturday services.
"If you look around, a lot of the local churches also have a Saturday mass scheduled," he said.