VIDALIA — The Vidalia High School boys and girls basketball teams’ plans to host Jena High School Tuesday were sunk — almost literally.

A leak in the roof of the Vidalia gym forced the Vikings and Lady Vikings to play at Jena Tuesday instead of at home. The leak, which boys head coach Robert Sanders said has been a problem for years, became an issue when rain moved through the area Tuesday.

“I knew as soon as it started raining (Tuesday) that it was going to possibly be a problem,” Sanders said. “I got here about 10:15 in the morning, and that was confirmed.”

Sanders said Jena interim head coach Orrin Joiner offered to host the game in Jena’s gym instead of having to reschedule. It’s not the first time this season the leaking affected Vidalia athletics.

“We had to reschedule a ninth-grade game earlier this year with Natchez High,” Sanders said. “The choice (with Jena) was to either play it there, or move the game to Thursday or Saturday,”

Sanders said the leaking affected the bleachers for a while, but it wasn’t until this year that games were affected because of the leaking.

“We’ve just kind of been lucky up until this point, where it hasn’t done it on game days (before this season),” Sanders said.

“They’ve done patchwork on it, but all that does is move the leak from one spot to another. They say they don’t have the money to fix it properly.”

Which created quite an inconvenience Tuesday, Sanders said.

“It just so happened that our officials who were scheduled to be here were sent over there,” Sanders said. “The officials over there were unavailable, so the ones from our association had to go.”

Sanders said the situation is something he and the school will just have to keep playing by ear.

“I don’t really have any other choice,” Sanders said. “The powers that be may, but I don’t.”