CHAPEL HILL—The inclement weather that has covered almost the entire state of North Carolina has caused the North Carolina High School Athletic Association to make adjustments in both the schedule for the NCHSAA wrestling championships and in the procedure for seeding for the state basketball playoffs.

                  The state wrestling event was scheduled to start on Thursday at the Greensboro Coliseum, but an adjusted schedule will have the event start Friday at noon with the first round of the 3-A competition, followed at 1:30 with the first round in 4-A, 3 p.m. with the first round in 2-A, and then the first round of 1-A will start at 8 p.m. since there are fewer competitors.

                  By eliminating scheduled breaks and making other adjustments, the championship schedule still has the finals in all classifications on Saturday afternoon, to start no earlier than 4 p.m.

                  A complete revised schedule will be forthcoming from the NCHSAA.

                  The seeding for the basketball playoffs will take place as scheduled on Saturday.  The weather has impacted the large majority of conference basketball tournaments and several have already been cancelled.  The NCHSAA will not use conference tournament results this year in the basketball seeding process.

                  If conferences have ties for positions in the standings and want to hold the special playoff games to break those ties—they often have occurred as part of the conference tournament—and are able to do so, those games may count in terms of determining state playoff qualifiers if completed by the reporting deadline.

                  “We chose to modify our wrestling schedule to ensure optimal participation as well as trying to ensure the safety and welfare of all the participants, officials and fans who may be traveling to Greensboro for the event,” said Davis Whitfield, the commissioner of the NCHSAA. “In terms of basketball seeding, with so many school systems out of school today and more inclement weather expected today and tonight, we felt the most consistent and fairest way was not to count conference tournament results for seeding.  We didn’t want conferences or school systems to feel they had to make a difficult decision to play because of the impact on seeding. However, allowing them to play games to break ties if they are able provides them with some flexibility.”