04/15/2007

No way spring sports can dig out from under

By Mark Urban
Staff writer
murban@
record-eagle.com

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The week after spring break is loaded with games, meets and matches as teams are ready to leave the monotony of the gymnasium behind.

But instead of digging into a freshly painted batters box or landing in a jump pit for the first time this season, teams have been digging snow off fields while athletic directors have that sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs.

The freaky late winter storm has wreaked havoc on an already-condensed spring sports season, essentially wiping out everything this week.

"Every sport this week lost at least two events,” Traverse City West athletic director Patti Tibaldi said. "I told our coaches, 'You just lost a quarter of your season right there.' ”

The TC Central baseball team nearly lost four games this week before a slew of phone calls finally got the Trojans out on the diamond Friday. Central was supposed to play Kalkaska on Wednesday and Bay City Western today, but not even digging out the diamond could salvage the home contests.

"We called about 65 schools in the state,” Central athletic director and baseball coach Ian Hearn said. "Fortunately we were able to find somebody (Corunna) that nobody else wanted to play because they are pretty good.”

Central's baseball team couldn't even get two scheduled games during its spring break trip to Indiana. The Trojans played two games near Fort Wayne, Ind., on April 2 when the temperature was 75 degrees. Perfect for baseball, even at such an early date.

The next day, a scheduled two-a-day practice, found the thermometer at 28 with snow. So the Trojans retreated inside for practice (hey, we could have done this without traveling), were snowed out the next day and returned to a foot and a half of snow.

Welcome to the spring that never was.

What it means down the snowy road is a lot of non-conference games will not be played at all because of scheduling conflicts with league contests and finding officials.

And a good day or two of rain that will eventually come will lead to even more problems with more and more rescheduling running into more and more contests while trying to find fewer and fewer available officials willing to work in an already finite number of days.

Throw in the changing of the prep seasons for the fall and all those accompanying headaches and scheduling problems — not to mention conference realignments — and it is not a fun time to be a high school athletic director right now. Not that it was all that fun anyway.

"You just throw your hands up,” Tibaldi said. "You do what you can do.”

Sounds like us all.