It's a week before game day and Hugh Clarke is getting desperate.

Clarke, the Educational Complex tackle football head coach, needs lawn mowers so he and his players can cut their field before the game.

He knows it will take precious time that could have spent getting his team in a frame of mind to play, but he also understands reality.

"We can't get vexed, because somebody's got to do it," Clarke said. "If we don't cut the grass, we don't have a place to play. It's that simple."

To Chuck Lysaker, a tackle football referee, it's not surprising that players and coaches, who should be readying themselves for a big game, have to worry about making a proper place to play.

"We have played when the field wasn't marked, and we used the bleachers as a point reference," Lysaker said.

The athletic program at Complex and Central High School are at the mercy of the Education Department's maintenance division.

"The principals ask, but there is no surety that the maintenance department will do it," Lysaker said.

Lysaker, who has lived on St. Croix for 15 years and is a certified football referee, said that half the problems with the program could be solved by better communication among all involved in tackle football.

For example, he has suggested using Rudy Krigger Ball Park, which is maintained by the Housing, Parks and Recreation Department, for some of the games-but it has fallen on deaf ears.

Playing on a neutral field would help the St. Croix Private Schools Pirates, a combined team of players form St. Joseph, Good Hope and Country Day schools, because that team does not have a home field. The team practices at Country Day, which has three soccer teams-elementary, junior varsity and varsity-also needing the field. Thus, the team often is left without even a place to practice.

The need for a neutral field became evident when the Private Schools teams showed up to play the Complex field, which also is designated as the Private Schools' "home" field.

Clarke said they could not play on the Complex field. Furthermore, his team was not there, so the Private Schools had no opponent.

Clarke kept the Barracudas away to protest the IAA's handling of the scheduling in general and its handling specifically of his own team's first game, which Complex lost to Central, 28-0.

He wrote a letter to St. Croix Football Commissioner Terrell Henderson, asking for a meeting to discuss the problems and saying his team would not play until the problems were resolved.

Clarke had spent the week before the game against Central preparing the Complex field and surrounding area. He and the players thought they would be playing the Private School Pirates, based on the original schedule, but one day before the game, Clarke learned that Central was the opponent.

Worse yet, Clarke said, Gregory Tyler, the assistant coach at Central, is president of the St. Croix IAA and he helped officiate the game, even though one of the teams was his own.

Tyler stepped in because two of the four referees had not been notified about the game.

After Clarke protested, the commissioner admitted that the referee shortage in the season-opener was his fault. Henderson said that he had not been able to contact more than two officials to work the game, but he also said that both coaches agreed before the game to allow Tyler to officiate.

Tyler said that Clarke, who is also a football referee, was asked to officiate the game but declined.

Clarke said that Tyler called a fair game but that he opposed, on principle, the conflict inherent in a coach officiating a game his team is playing.

League coaches and Henderson subsequently sided against Clarke.

Tyler, in his capacity as IAA president, said Clark's protest had no merit because it was not based on a violation of an IAA rules regulation or by-law.

Clarke's response was that he would forfeit the remainder of the games.

League coaches and referees believed that's exactly what he was doing when he showed up at a game against the Pirates without his players. The Pirates were awarded the game by forfeit.

Clarke was upset when the league issued the forfeit because he thought the season was on hold while he protested the season-opener against Central's Caribs.

He also said that he had not received a corrected schedule and did not know his team was to play the Pirates that day.

Still, he was firm about the Pirates not gaining access what he called "my field," Lysaker recalls.

Clarke threatened to pull his team from the St. Croix league and suggested to Complex principal Kurt Vialet that the school raise funds to allow inter-island travel to play instead against St. Thomas teams.

Clarke's action was not well-received by anyone else in authority, for two reasons:

• It threatened the existence of the tackle football sport, which had just been revived on the island. With Complex out of the league, St. Croix would be down to two teams, Central and the Private Schools. According to the St. Croix IAA, a league must have at least three teams. Without Complex, the other teams would have to play only exhibition games.

• Clarke's players had taken their loss like good sports and were ready to move on. They were surprised by Clarke's plans to get out of the league and to forfeit games, and so was Vialet.

Vialet met with Clarke and the players, nixed the idea of pulling out of the league, and asked the IAA to give Clarke an updated and accurate schedule.

Lysaker said that he and the other referees issued the forfeit-win to the Pirates after they consulted the IAA rule book and took into consideration that the Pirates were at Complex ready to play and that the field, which at the time would have been the Pirates' home field, was not mad available to them.

Dwain Murphy, a pastor who is volunteer head coach for a Central High Caribs, has criticized Clarke's rumblings about the season opener because, Murphy said, he, too, did not know who his opponent would be until the day before the game.

Clarke isn't buying that.

"The president of the SCIAA that makes up the schedule works at Central and he's the assistant coach," said Clarke, who has contended that the league was trying to push his Barracuda into playing, despite knowing the team had practiced for only three weeks. The Barracudas had proven themselves to be a good team-they beat the Caribs three times last year and were league champions-but they still needed adequate time to prepare for this season.

During one of the Barracudas' three practice weeks, Clarke had to be away at a soccer training camp, and the team's captain, Kirby Chelcher, had to lead the drills.

Murphy's response to Clarke's complaint was that last year, Central got its equipment last, just two weeks before the season opener against the Barracudas-but did not complain.

At the St. Croix IAA meeting to discuss Clarke's protest, Lysaker did not mince words.

He told Clarke that he thought his protest had more to do with his dislike of Tyler and Henderson than it did with rules violations.

"Tyler is busting his butt trying to keep football together, and all you do is nitpick," Lysaker told Clarke.

He also labeled Clarke's protest "Crucian Confusion," a derogatory local term for deliberate chaos.

"The association could be better if we had communication, if we had better-maintained fields and even better-trained referees-not just for football, for all sports," he said.

The schools have many players who are two-sport athletes, but badly coordinated scheduling means players have to try to get to two practices and even two games in one day.

Sometimes, they come to practice late or don't come at all.

"In the States, you wouldn't have a football game cancelled because some kids are playing volleyball," Lysacker said.

But that's exactly what has happened.

Central was scheduled to play its tackle football championship game Nov. 12 as part of its Homecoming activities, but the game had to be postponed for a week because some players on the opposing team, the Private Schools, had to travel to St. Thomas for a volleyball tournament.

Tyler, whose St. Croix IAA governs the sport, said Murphy and Richard Bell, the Private Schools coach, agreed to postpone the game on Nov. 20. However, Hurricane Lenny forced a second postponement, to Nov. 27, and then a third.

The game finally was played Dec. 4.