Inclement weather prevailing on the island over the past few weeks has brought severe scheduling challenges for a number of outdoor sporting activities.

Sports such as ball hockey, football, netball, and pickleball have all cancelled or rescheduled fixtures after heavy rain and winds left the fields too dangerous for the athletes.

The Bermuda Football Association cancelled all Appleby Youth League matches last week as a result of the bad weather, much to the frustration of BFA youth committee chairman Manny Faria.

“It seems like we get rain every weekend,’’ Faria said.

“This has been happening since the later part of the summer. It's frustrating for us as organisers, but I'm sure it's also very frustrating for the young boys and girls who just want to play football on the weekend.

“We have had some weeks where the teams have played through the rain but we have had to call off a full day of matches which can consist of up to 46 games on any given Saturday.

“The safety of our players and match officials are our priority. The home field operators are asked to make an assessment of their fields and report the condition of the field to us.

“If the field is deemed to be dangerous, we postpone the matches. Consideration must also be given to the wear and tear of the fields.

“Many of the fields host senior matches and having eight consecutive hours or youth football on a saturated pitch can be detrimental to the longevity of the field.

“We've had weeks where we have called games off the night prior due to severe forecasts.

“In most instances we try to make the decision to call games as early as possible to avoid families travelling to venues.”

Matches start at 8.30am on a Saturday, so getting that information out as early as possible is an important consideration to make.

“Generally, we would call off all of the children's matches early in the morning and make a decision on the under-13 and under-15 matches at 11am after consulting the field operators,” Faria said.

“We call off those matches on an individual basis. Our marketing chair Terri Stewart does a wonderful job in announcing postponed matches on our social media platforms. We also alert coaches and managers via email and WhatsApp messages when dealing with specific matches.

“We usually get the bad weather in January and February. This year we have experienced unusually bad weather at the start of the season, so Let's hope we experience better conditions going forward.”

The start of the netball season was postponed from its original start date of October 28 until November 11, but Bermuda Netball Association president Kimale Evans is confident the fixtures will be made up.

“It’s pushed everything back by about two weeks as we’ve had rain on Saturdays for the past three weeks,’’ Evans said.

“What we've done is we cancelled our season-opening tournament and gone directly to the leagues.

“We have tried to secure indoor facilities and we check the weather on Monday before trying to secure venues at CedarBridge Academy, and Bermuda College.

“Obviously, those venues are used by other sports such as basketball, indoor futsal and are booked months in advance. It’s not as easy as just moving indoors of it is raining.

“Our membership, when they see any bit of rain, they want to know if the game is still on. An hour is the technical response, but if the forecast really predicts a torrential downpour all day then we may cancel earlier.

“We have some senior matches that have to be rescheduled, but we are on track to end our season in April.”

For the Bermuda Rugby Football Union, the weather has proved to be a hindrance in the effort to keep the domestic league running, with Gemma Godfrey, the BRFU president outlining the difficulties.

“The weather has caused difficulty in maintaining our domestic league schedule,’’ Godfrey said.

“The National Sports Centre needs to maintain the quality of facilities such as South Field for all sports that use it, which the BRFU understands,” she said.

“Due to the nature of the game, when there’s been a lot of rain, the turf can get churned up during rucks and scrums. The NSC management team has been transparent in their communication with us on cancellations and have been very supportive in permitting us the use of South Field around the football schedule.

“Youth Sunday rugby has still gone ahead each week, as those sessions do not impact the field in the same way.

“Scheduling challenges around inclement weather is not a new issue for us so our fixtures team incorporates a number of rain days into our schedule.

“With North Field unavailable to us for the first half of the season due to international cricket and the World Rugby Classic, we have been very fortunate to be able to work with Southampton Rangers to host our league fixtures this side of Christmas.

“Our thanks goes to Chanjiv Simons and the team at Rangers for their support in hosting several of our fixtures. Rugby returns to North Field in the new year.

“Our aspiration is that one day in the future, we might be able to secure a dedicated space for Bermuda rugby, where all our games, national team training, club and youth training can take place in one space.

“This would enable to us create more consistency with local league fixtures and would assist with cross-pollination across all of our programmes, from youth to seniors.”

Liana Carrick, the club manager at Pomander Gate Tennis & Pickleball Club, also highlighted the difficulties brought about by the harsh weather conditions.

“The inclement weather this year has been challenging for pickleball players,’’ she said.

“The island has no dedicated indoor pickleball courts, so recreational play, ladder matches and tournaments have all been affected by tropical storms, hurricanes, storm-force winds and torrential rain.

“Given the smaller size of a pickleball court and the focus on net play, many devoted pickleball players have been willing to squeegee the courts and get back out there.

“Pomander Gate Tennis & Pickleball Club has worked through three major pickleball tournaments this year.

“The Deloitte Open in June saw 120 plus participants play during an amazing break in bad weather.

“The BDA Blue Open in September had a delayed start due to Hurricane Lee. The Open singles and a junior event had to be cancelled but the other eight events went ahead as soon as the storm had passed by.

“The club is in the middle of a disrupted Members Pickleball Championship, sponsored by Atlantic Construction Ltd and Ilios Gallery & Design, with 15 hours of play lost due to heavy rain last Friday evening and all day Saturday.

“Events went on throughout Sunday with much court squeegeeing and a postponed Open Singles event. Three event finals were held on Monday evening in extremely windy conditions. The remaining events are rescheduled to this coming weekend.”

Heavy rain has left the ball hockey rink at Pembroke Community Club waterlogged on a number of occasions with Hart Freedman, the league president, unable to recall such bad weather.

“To my knowledge we have never had so many disruptions due to rain,’’ Freedman said.

“As long as there is no roof, then active rain will mean cancellations. What we’re hoping for is that the refurbishments like the new tiles, and adjustments to the flooring will help with the drainage, which will mean it dries up a little faster.”