Update, 1:15 p.m.: The DoDEA announced today that tonight’s Fort Campbell game against Trigg County has been rescheduled to Thursday, Oct. 30.

During the shutdown, schools will work to reschedule extracurricular activities and sports events where possible, DoDEA spokesman Michael O’Day told Clarksville Now.

Fort Campbell’s homecoming dance is tentatively rescheduled for mid-October but decisions on rescheduling events will be made as needed in the coming days/weeks, he said.

Previously:

FORT CAMPBELL, KY (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, while unable to break the Congressional stalemate that led to this week’s government shutdown, is trying to lessen its impact in Kentucky by seeking an urgent exemption that will allow Fort Campbell High School to play football tonight.

The Falcons were scheduled to have a big regional game tonight against Trigg County. But because of the shutdown, all DoDEA extracurricular activities and athletics have been suspended. The Falcons football team has not be allowed to practice since Tuesday night, and, if nothing changes, tonight’s game will be forfeited and an automatic win will go to Trigg County. This would put the playoffs in heavy jeopardy for Fort Campbell.

Friday morning, Sen. McConnell sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth urging him to quickly grant DoDEA schools “excepted status.”

“Student dependents of American servicemembers have been left in the lurch and canot participate in interscholastic athletics,” McConnell wrote. “Not only does this threaten the standing of high school teams relative to their non-DoD peers, it also risks disrupting individual student-athletes’ aspirations of competing at the college level, as the fall season is a major athletic recruiting opportunity for institutions of higher education.”

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He asked Hegseth to grant an exception for all DoDEA school activities, to help support all students of servicemembers.

“This lapse in appropriations, like all government shutdowns, is deeply harmful to government operations, particularly within the Department of Defense,” McConnell wrote. “However, we should not force the children of our servicememenbers to pay the price for Washington’s failure to appropriate funds on time.”

The bottom of the letter has a hand-written, underlined note stating: “URGENT!!”

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