Considering the weather, it took a dedicated fan or a crazy sports editor to venture over to Memorial Stadium Saturday afternoon for the WesCo North soccer game between Everett and Oak Harbor.

Having been raised in the Pacific Northwest my lady tells me there is a distinct difference between a rainstorm and a simple shower, but it didn’t take a “native” to realize it was coming down in buckets.

Arriving at the stadium at 12:30 p.m. I obtained a program and while standing in line, I had a chat with some folks who had made the trek from Everett.

We agreed every one of us was about a half-inch off plum.

At the time both teams were on the field warming up, if that was possible as hard as the rain was coming down.

I decided rather than getting any wetter than I was during my brief walk to the ticket booth, I would sit in the rig until the game started — Mother Adams didn’t raise no fools!

The Wildcats were doing their pre-game drills on the north end of the field and sure enough there was Coach Barker, working just as hard as the rest of the team, honing goal keeper Zach Koeller’s defending skills against corner kicks.

Like yours truly Barker has silver hair — I don’t say gray, gray is for old dudes.

Silver hair on coaches and ex-coaches is the result of losing too many games over the years that should have been won, so we both resembled drowned rats.

Warmups continued until 12:55 when both teams left the field and went into the locker rooms.

Strange, I thought, maybe both coaches wanted to get their players dried off a bit before hitting the field for 80 minutes of soccer action. The funny thing was, neither team came back on the field.

Around 1:30, I saw Oak Harbor Athletic Director Bob Smithson talking with both coaches and realized something was amiss.

The rain hadn’t abated as I went to check things out and then I learned the game had been postponed. Not because of the weather conditions — because one of the referees had failed to show up!

Apparently, he decided he didn’t want to get his yellow and black striped shirt wet. Either that or it had something to do with the NCAA tournament being on television. Smithson said they telephoned the guy who said he could possibly get his carcass to the field by 1:50 but nothing was definite.

Rather than have the teams try to get warmed up again, the game was postponed.

Needless to say, coach Barker wasn’t happy and I swore I could see steam rising from his silver locks.

European soccer has the reputation of being a “strange” sport sometimes, but can you imagine postponing a football game because a referee failed to show up? Shoot, you’d have a riot on your hands!

I talked with some of the Oak Harbor fans as I was leaving the stadium and they weren’t any happier than the coach was.

I suppose it could have been worse, you could have driven to Oak Harbor from Everett .