Could someone explain how schools that have Saturday classes deal with games on Saturdays (Lawrenceville, SPS, Groton, Hotchkiss)? My understanding is that Saturday is a shorter day, but I’m still wondering how teams can get to games at a reasonable time. I’m assuming that there needs to be a similar amount of home vs. away games. Are Saturday games against closer schools? Do students have to miss class on Saturday mornings? Or are games scheduled in the late afternoon/evening?
Basically, classes end at noon. Games are at 2 or 3. Or even 4 pm, or occasionally even in the evening. Schools in the Northeast are close to each other. For instance, Hotchkiss has Millbrook, Berkshire, Trinity Pawling, Salisbury, Kent, South Kent and Canterbury within 30 minutes of its campus. Most of the other schools it plays are within an hour’s drive. Only a very few are farther.
Traditionally they had Saturday classes in part because of sports - or at least that is how it was at my prep school…Weds and Saturday were both short days (end at noon) so we could travel to games… Saturday classes allowed for short days on Weds!
Saturday morning classes also kept kids out of trouble on Friday:)
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Also, these are LONG days on Weds and Saturday…at least they were for me. I have to say, playing JV basketball and leaving at 12:30 on Weds and coming home after dinner at like 7:30 wasn’t all that unusual at my school. We sometimes had JV/Varsity back-to-back games and had to wait, etc. We’d stop to eat on the way home. No clue if it’s still standard at my school, I would assume sometimes? It is a long time..Some of the schools we played were 2 hours away in a car (longer in a bus), some only 30 minutes…probably an hour (in a bus) on average each way..
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Yes, the game days are frequently still long. My daughter is on JV lacrosse at a CT boarding school. They had a game yesterday at a school 1.5 hours away, after the Varsity game. Left her school at 2 for a 4pm start. Then there was a rain/thunder delay. By the time they finished the game, got Chipotle and got back to her school it was around 8pm.
Even as a student at a day school in the Boston area in the 90s, we had half days on Wednesdays for games and played schools like SPS frequently. That was always a long ride to NH, sometimes on Wednesdays. Or down to St Georges in RI. And then my house was another 45 minutes from my school! I would have rather been a boarder. We definitely had late nights and long trips.
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