For the third time this season, a Lawrence High-Free State baseball game was delayed because of inclement weather.

Thursday’s game was called about 6:30 p.m. in the fifth inning, tied at 3, because of lightning and will resume at 4 p.m. today at Ice Field.

It’s a frustrating delay for the teams, but neither coach was complaining late Thursday night after a tornado hit a mile from Holcom Sports Complex.

“Safety of the kids is paramount to everything else,” FSHS coach Mike Hill said. “You’d like to be able to play, but obviously it was the right call to postpone.”

Lawrence High and Shawnee Mission Northwest completed one softball game — the Cougars won in 11 innings — before the second half of the doubleheader was delayed. No make-up date has been scheduled.

The Lawrence High-Manhattan girls soccer game never got started, as the teams left the Youth Sports Inc. Fields about 6 p.m.

As for the Lions-Firebirds baseball game, resuming a game with nearly five innings completed can be frustrating.

“You hate to play a game over a two-day period,” LHS coach David Petry said before the tornado warnings. “That changes a lot of things. The pitchers in the game probably won’t come back, you may have different umpires, there’s a lot of things that could change.”

What won’t change is the score or the situation.

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Kansas State High School Activities Assn. rules stipulate that the game will resume in the exact situation it was called. In this case, it’s there’s one out in the bottom of the fifth inning with one strike on LHS senior Matt Johnson. The Lions have senior Spence Chaney at second and senior Kyle McManness at first.

Neither pitcher — FSHS sophomore Jake Hoover and LHS senior Ryan Rowland — is required to continue pitching, however.

Petry said there could be some difficulty securing umpires for the game, but wouldn’t know more until this morning. If varsity umpires can’t be found, the game could be delayed until next week.