Because seven days of school were missed due to Hurricane Irma, girls’ middle-school basketball Coach Derrick Hamilton has been forced to accept the reality that his team has lost a third of its season. Brevard Public Schools canceled all extra-curricular activities from Sept. 7 to Sept.15. As a result, numerous sports competitions and practices were either canceled or postponed.

“We missed a couple of those games we really wanted to play like Hoover and Delaura,” Hamilton said. “Two of those games for me were really important as far as us winning and getting into the playo s. I didn’t really like it, but I don’t make the rules.”

The volleyball team went from missing nearly two weeks of practice — along with games against Melbourne, Satellite, Bayside and a scheduled tournament — to playing a game the day it returned to school. Despite this, junior Sally Kempfer said the layo helped her team.

“That time o gave us enough time to recuperate and relax,” Kempfer said. “It gave us a little more time against teams like Mel High and big Cape Coast Conference teams that we we’re a little worried about, so now I think we can just focus and practice on getting together and defeating the teams that are going to be big for us.”

The boys’ and girls’ cross-country teams also missed two weeks of morning practices, along with meets at the University of North Florida and Bayside High School. Though the date was previously left open, a meet in Port Orange was rescheduled to Sept. 23, the morning of the Homecoming dance. The two-hour drive from the Melbourne Auditorium was a deciding factor in whether or not some runners attended the meet.

“It’s affected some people,” sophomore Scarlett Heuett said. “Some girls didn’t go and it affected us because it’s really far from where Homecoming was.”

Sophomore Diego Vento was disappointed in missing one of the previously scheduled meets.

“It really stunk because we thought we were going do really well in that meet,” Vento said.