John F. Wiley Stadium is no stranger to floods.

In the last three years, the field has flooded four times. Tropical Storm Gordon just so happened to be the latest storm to swamp the stadium used for the Waynesburg University soccer and football events.

As a result, both soccer teams, as well as the football team, had to move their practices to Waynesburg Central High School. Those changes heavily altered normal practice schedules.

For football, instead of its normal practices in the late afternoon during the week, head coach Chris Smithley’s team spent all of last week practicing at 5 a.m. at Waynesburg Central.

“I think it affected our schedule, but there’s no excuse for the way that [the team] played Saturday [against Bethany],” Smithley said. “I thought that we had our best week of practice all year. Guys that haven’t gotten gassed all year got gassed Saturday, so I don’t know if it was too much time off from practicing in the mornings to playing at night, but we’re evaluating all of those things.”

The football team also did not practice the Friday before their game against Bethany, so the players could get extra rest heading into the showdown with the Bison.

According to Smithley, the 5 a.m. practices were the best option. The only alternative would have been practicing for two hours starting at 9:30 p.m. Smithley said he “100 percent does not approve of the kids not eating for six hours, especially that late at night.”

The men’s and women’s soccer teams also had to change around their schedules. Instead of the normal 6-8 p.m. and 8-10 p.m. practice slots for the women and men, respectively, they have been in the Rudy Marisa Fieldhouse a couple of times and have gone to Waynesburg Central High School. Men’s head coach Brad Heethuis and women’s head coach Laura Heethuis ran joint practices from 9:30-11:00 p.m. this past week.

“Waynesburg Central is always an option if anything were to happen to John F. Wiley Stadium,” Laura Heethuis said. “The gym here is not ideal because we can’t do things soccer related. Unfortunately, [the floods] have become an all too common occurrence, so we just have to roll with the punches.”

However, both the men’s and women’s soccer players have remained optimistic about the situations, with both coaches praising their resilience, willing to change their schedules, and ability to bounce back to situations.

Laura Heethuis also said that if Waynesburg Central High School could not accommodate the soccer teams for the 9:30-11:00 p.m. time slots, they do have backups such as Milan Stadium on the campus of West Virginia University.

“Anything with turf is really all that we need,” said Heethuis.

With Hurricane Florence pushing leftover rain into the southwestern Pennsylvania area, there was more fear of flooding. The three teams have reportedly put backup locations in place in case the field was left in an unplayable condition.