When Friday began, the biggest question about Lawrence High’s 7:30 p.m. football game against Shawnee Mission East was whether the Haskell Stadium field would hold up.

By kickoff, severe weather made that a moot point.

Around 6:10 p.m. Friday, Lawrence High officials announced the game between the Lions and Lancers had been called off. Severe weather, including a tornado warning in Douglas County, made safety a chief concern.

“It’s not the field that canceled it,” LHS coach Dirk Wedd said. “It’s going to get torn up no matter what. It’s saturated. But I do think that was a good thing to come out of all of this. It was good for the field tonight.”

Instead of playing, Wedd took his team into the LHS gymnasium for practice.

“It’s not good,” Wedd said. “But they’re not the first Lawrence High team to have a game canceled because of weather. We’ll go into the gym to practice, and – who knows? – maybe we’ll be better prepared because of this.”

LHS and SM East will play at noon today on the Lawrence High campus at the field inside the track off of 19th Street.

LHS athletic director Ron Commons said the result was not ideal but was the best the Lions could come up with.

“Shawnee Mission East said they could host it tomorrow at one of their district stadiums, but we wanted to keep it as a home game,” Commons said.

LHS checked with Kansas University about playing the game at Memorial Stadium on Friday, but the venue was not available. Commons said officials also checked with KU about playing the game at Memorial Stadium today, but discovered they could not because of NCAA rules. If KU coach Mark Mangino were to be in his office at any point during the game, it could be construed as a violation of NCAA rules. Mangino’s office overlooks the Memorial Stadium field.

LHS also checked with Baker University in Baldwin City, but a soccer tournament already was scheduled.

Free State High avoided the mess by playing Thursday night. Although conditions were wet then, the Firebirds managed and walked away with a 28-7 victory over Shawnee Mission South.

Other area high schools impacted by the weather Friday:

De Soto and Eudora, which had their game against each other moved to 7 p.m. Monday; Baldwin, which had its game at Gardner-Edgerton moved to 7 p.m. Monday; Perry-Lecompton, which moved its game against Bishop Ward from the PLHS field to Kansas City Piper, which has a stadium with artificial turf.

“We called around, Piper had turf, and Ward’s not too far from there,” Perry-Lecompton coach Mike Paramore said. “So we decided to go for it.”