Sporting Club Jacksonville planned its home preseason women's soccer opener against Hibernian. The weather had other ideas. What's next for the club?
For Sporting Club Jacksonville, history is on hold.
Severe weather washed out Sporting Jax's scheduled preseason women's soccer match against Scottish Women's Premier League champion Hibernian on Aug. 2 at the University of North Florida's Hodges Stadium.
The match will not be made up against Hibernian, which flies back to Europe this week. However, Sporting Jax president Steve Livingstone said the organization is working to schedule a replacement game with a different opponent at a still-undetermined future date.
A barrage of lightning and a torrential 40-minute downpour, which began shortly after 5 p.m., kept the teams from ever taking the field for the first-ever home match for a Jacksonville club in any top-division professional women's sports league.
With hundreds of lightning strikes recorded in the vicinity of Hodges Stadium, patches of standing water on the field and the National Weather Service projecting continued thunderstorms through the evening, Livingstone said that match officials had ruled the game unplayable. He announced the cancellation at 7 p.m.
Livingstone said that fans with tickets for the Hibernian game will receive information on obtaining a refund or applying those tickets toward a future contest.
What's next for Sporting Jax?
Hibernian, which won its fourth Scottish championship in May, was expected to provide a stiff test for Sporting Jax and its 24-player roster under head coach Stacey Balaam. Now, the next step is uncertain.
The cancellation leaves Sporting Jax, for now, with no home preseason contests before the team begins its inaugural Gainbridge Super League season on Aug. 23 against DC Power FC at Hodges Stadium.
Sporting Jax had already sustained one schedule shake-up earlier in the weekend: The previously scheduled Aug. 10 game against Wrexham, the women's team for the Welsh club that has attained worldwide fame through the FX series "Welcome to Wrexham," dropped off the calendar on Aug. 1 with Wrexham citing "an overwhelming number of injuries."
No make-up date is yet set for the Wrexham match, which was to be Sporting Jax's final preseason tune-up.
Barring the addition of another match, Sporting Jax would have no live action before the Super League kickoff other than its two closed-door road scrimmages in July against the Orlando Pride of the National Women's Soccer League and the University of Florida.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Sporting Club Jacksonville-Hibernian women's soccer canceled
Category: General Sports
