“We had a total of 6 inches (of rain) over the weekend — very uncommon, like a catastrophic act of God,” Fouty said. “The field performed really well, though.

“We do have a drainage area in DeMartin and we do have a slight crown on the field, so the heavy water should have shed to the sides. It functioned exactly as it was designed.”

To be safe, the MSU athletics department is in the process of moving the women’s soccer game scheduled for 4 p.m. Wednesday to another location on campus — a place to be determined.

Too much water continues to swamp Old College Field, which would make playing on it and having spectators trudge through the flood only hurt the facility more.

According to the Facilities, Event & Sports Management department, the goal is to have the middle two-thirds of the field stay dry enough for playable conditions.

It was like nothing many of the girls had ever played in before, yet they showed no signs of hating the circumstances.

The Spartans men’s soccer game that was scheduled to follow the women’s game was canceled due to extreme weather and standing water.

But women’s soccer head coach Tom Saxton couldn’t have been more impressed with the way the administration dealt with the over-abundance of water that still remained on the remaining one-third of the soaking-wet grass — allowing the full 90-minute game to finish.

“Other schools wouldn’t have been able to finish that game,” Saxton said. “Our grounds crew did all they could and they did a great job dealing with all of that water. It was crazy out there, but everyone did their part.”

But the flooding issue isn’t confined to the playing terrain of Old College Field — the walkways to and from the seating areas also are problematic. Fouty and Seth Kesler, director of events and championships, said that specific area is a “floodway” — which, by law, is reserved for emergency diversion for large amounts of flood water to streams or rivers.

“It has a lot to do with what time of the year it is, what happens with the weather and the Red Cedar (River) overflowing,” Kesler said. “We’ve had to cancel baseball games, softball, and men’s and women’s soccer before. This isn’t crazy, but the amount of rain this past weekend was.”

For the next couple of days, Fouty and her crew have prepared the site for the worst — a flood.

With the massive amount of rain hitting the rivers, the normal standard of time for an area like Old College Field to truly see damage is 24-48 hours after the storms.

“On Wednesday, it will be peaking for the flood stage to take place and then it will slowly recede,” Fouty said — making the area unusable for Wednesday’s regularly scheduled game.

The standing flood water will sit inside Old College Field’s gates, protecting the water from making its way to populated areas, which could cause damage to homes.

“We probably wouldn’t do anything very differently if this happened again,” Fouty said. “We just dry the field out as much as we can leading up to the games so it can accept as much rain as possible.

“There’s not much you can do but put your time in on the front end. Hard work pays off.”