Hurricane Matthew has caused massive disruptions in the weekend’s college volleyball schedule around the east coast of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
Among the games interrupted was a Friday matchup between South Carolina and Georgia, which will now be played at Georgia instead of its intended location at South Carolina.
The teams’ second game of the season, on November 6th, will now flip to South Carolina in exchange.
Evacuations ahead of the anticipated arrival of the powerful Category 3 hurricane (formerly a category 4) have begun as the storm passes through the Bahamas. Matthew has already killed 10 people after roaring through Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.
Evacuation orders are currently in place for parts of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
On Wednesday afternoon, the hurricane sat 70 miles from Long Island, Bahamas; or 400 miles from West Palm Beach, Florida, and is moving northwest at 11 miles per hour.
According to Weather Underground, the storm has sustained maximum winds as of 5PM Eastern Time of 120 mph with gusts up to 150mph.
There current track doesn’t necessarily indicate that the storm will make landfall before hooking back toward the southeast (and possibly interacting with the oncoming Tropical Storm Nicole), but it will come close enough, and is a powerful enough storm, to cause flooding and wind damage in the aforementioned U.S. states. The storm is expected to strengthen again over the next 36 hours as it approaches Florida.
Both South Carolina and Georgia sit in the bottom half of the SEC standings, though both sport impressive season-long records. South Carolina is 13-2 on the season, but only 1-2 in conference play. Georgia is 12-5 overall, but 0-4 in conference play.
A list of schedule disruptions is below:
- South Carolina’s match against the University of Georgia on Friday has been moved to Athens, Georgia, and will be played at 7 PM. The teams’ second matchup of the season, on November 6th, will be played in South Carolina.
- The game was supposed to be the Dig Pink game – which now has been scheduled for the October 28th game against LSU. South Carolina is scheduled to play Florida on Sunday, and no change has been a nnounced yet for that match.
- College of Charleston’s matches for Saturday and Sunday have been rescheduled. They will play Delaware on Tuesday, October 6th; no makeup date for Sunday’s match against Northeastern has been set.
- Florida Atlantic’s home game against Rice, originally scheduled for Friday, has been moved to next Tuesday at noon.
- A Friday game between UCF and Houston, originally scheduled for 4PM on Friday at UCF, has been moved to University of South Florida in Tampa
- Florida Southern will not travel to play Rollins on Friday or Embry-Riddle on Saturday. Both have been postponed and rescheduled
- Southeastern UNiversity’s matches against Johnson on Thursday and Florida Memorial on Saturday have been postponed.
- Webber Internationals volleyball team will not travel to play Keiser on Wednesday or host St. Thomas on Saturday. Both matches will be rescheduled.
- Warner University’s home match against Johnson and Wales on Saturday has been postponed, though their home match against Southeastern on Wednesday night is still scheduled.
- Many FAU teams, including volleyball and football, have headed to South Florida to practice the rest of the week.
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