A bizarre new reason for football postponement: Fire ants!
When Friday's football game between Hunter-Kinard-Tyler (S.C.) High and Calhoun County (S.C.) High (members of which are pictured below) was delayed for two days, few people (if any) would have predicted what caused the postponement.
Weather? Not this time. A power outage? Nope, the electricity was flowing just fine.
Instead, the matchup between two small South Carolina schools was delayed because of a massive infestation of fire ants on Hunter-Kinard-Tyler's home field. After inspecting the field before the game's opening kickoff, football referee Steve Hook discovered nearly 20 active fire ant mounds on the surface of play.
According to the Associated Press, Hook then consulted with the rest of his officiating crew and decided that unless the fire ant piles were removed, the game couldn't continue as scheduled. That got Hunter-Kinard-Tyler officials in action, with some actively attempting to dig out the ant piles and others trying to kill the piles by pouring salt on them.
Yet those methods were to no avail, and a fellow fan attending the game who offered to provide fire ant poison couldn't step in to save the game either, leading to a two-day postponement while the fire ant threat abated.
Luckily for both teams involved, by the time Calhoun County came back the ant problem had been solved. Unfortunately for Hunter-Kinard-Tyler, that was the only good news from the start of the new week, as Calhoun County rolled to a 19-8 victory on the newly de-anted surface.
So much for hurricanes and tornadoes causing cancellations. Now they can all take a back seat to the wrath of ants, which brought these two South Carolina programs to their knees.
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