Hurricane Milton which roared to Category 5 status before making landfall as a Category 3 caused the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) to alter its weekend HBCU volleyball schedule. With Daytona Beach in the eye of probability as Milton is predicted to cross the state still at hurricane strength, the weekend’s slate of games have been moved to Florida A&M (FAMU). The Lawson Center will host all SWAC games in the state of Florida.
Alcorn State and Southern University are the competitors for this weekend. The Wildcats arrived in Tallahassee on Tuesday to play the Rattlers in a regularly scheduled match and then remain in Tallahassee at least through Monday.
The Rattlers defeated the Wildcats 3-0 today and will now accommodate their HBCU arch-rivals as the low-lying Daytona Beach is susceptible to flooding and the rotation of Hurricane Milton is expected to dump both rain and storm surge onto the eastern coast of Florida.
Three days on the job, FAMU Vice President and Director of Athletics, Angela Suggs, announced the schedule change at the Eddie Jackson 220 Quarterback Club today.
“We’re playing (Bethune) Cookman tonight and they’ll be with us until Monday.” Suggs said. “Alcorn and Southern were the switch teams for Sunday and Monday. Southern would have come to us on Sunday and Alcorn here on Monday. As opposed to them traveling down to Daytona, we’re going to host all those teams.”
She went on to say that the SWAC was involved in making the accommodations for the switch in venue as well as the FAMU Athletics Department and FAMU Administration.
“That’s family and it’s all about safety, SWAC love and SWAC support. It going to be like a big old tournament. We’ll have three SWAC sister institutions with us. Support is important. For our visiting schools even to see orange and green in the stands, especially for our young ladies is important. Bethune-Cookman was especially appreciative of us and we just want to do our part,” she concluded.