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Coaches, ADs struggle as Mother Nature rules
The Vindicator
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Puddles sit in the infield at Cene Park on Monday. The high school sports season has come to a near standstill because of torrential rains, cold weather and high winds this spring.
By Tom Williams
April showers may bring May flowers but this year, they’ve also delivered hundreds of canceled high school spring sporting events.
In his 20 years as Springfield High’s athletic director, Jeff Dyer doesn’t remember a year when Mother Nature raised such havoc with spring sports.
“This is the worst,” Dyer said.
Ursuline softball coach Mike Kernan said, “We’re within one month of the season being over and it feels like we haven’t even played.
“This is my 10th season and I can’t recall going five weeks trying to get a good solid week of play in,” Kernan said. “It’s affecting everybody.”
Once the sun comes out and dries out the fields, athletic departments have interesting choices to make in regards to league races and makeup games.
Greg Cooper, Canfield’s AD, says that despite all the cancellations over the past five weeks, he hasn’t hit the panic button just yet.
“We haven’t hit the tipping point until right now,” he said. “We’ve got to play [soon] or [consider] radical rescheduling.”
Cooper said baseball and softball teams normally avoid playing doubleheaders on weekdays or any games on Sundays. This May, those options will be considered as teams try to fulfill their league requirements.
The Federal League, All-American Conference and Inter Tri-County League all want their teams to play each league opponent twice.
Dyer said the ITCL will discuss counting tournament games as league games if makeups are a problem.
Dave Smercansky, Boardman’s AD, said scheduled non-conference games may be sacrificed over the next two weeks so league games can be made up.
Smercansky estimates that more than half of the Spartans’ baseball and softball games have been canceled since spring sports began on March 28. The number would be higher except Mike Trell’s softball team spent last week in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
“We’ve had wet springs but nothing like this,” Boardman’s 11th-year AD said.
Cooper says ADs and coaches “have become amateur meteorologists. First thing we do in the morning is turn on the weather report or computer [websites] for a forecast.”
Thanks to cellphones and social media, Smercansky says getting the word out to players and parents and officials is easier than ever.
“The nightmare is the actual process of cancellations — contacting the umpires, bus drivers, field managers. As for reaching your opponents, that’s not difficult. Most [ADs] have been hanging around the phones,” Smercansky said.
Teams that have been fortunate to play have had to make adjustments. When the Spartans play softball at the Fields of Dreams, they are not permitted to take infield practice before the game.
Ursuline plays home softball games at the Candlelite Knolls complex in Bazetta Township which has tarps for its infields. Kernan says the tarp is why the Irish are one of the few area softball teams to have played a dozen games.
“Having a tarp probably drives you more nuts, because then you get to thinking we might actually have a shot [of playing] even though the forecast tells you otherwise,” Kernan said.
Kernan said that playing so sporadically means that teams find it “hard to get a groove, a real feel for the game.”
Dyer said Springfield’s baseball team worked hard to get its field prepared for last Saturday’s makeup doubleheader against Lisbon.
“The field was in bad shape and the kids and coaches worked hard on it,” Dyer said. “But maybe we did more damage to it than before.”
Tuesday, Springfield’s field was unplayable.
Cooper says most athletic departments try to make cancellation decisions by 2 p.m.
“We really don’t want to put athletes in cold, wet conditions and risk injury,” Cooper said.
While most teams usually stop playing once eliminated from the tournament, Kernan said he intends to keep playing so his young team can develop. He’s tired of indoor practices.
“It’s monotonous, but there aren’t many options,” Kernan said.
Not until the sun returns on a daily basis.