I hope you enjoyed the five inches of snow on your front porch Tuesday morning. 

I know a large group of people that didn’t — namely the student-athletes and coaches of spring sports teams in our four-county area. 

Forget the games, most of these teams haven’t even been able to get outside and practice, creating a major concern for coaches. 

The Bradford High boys and girls track teams became the first spring sports teams to get under way at the South Hills Classic at Baldwin High School on Saturday, and that was by no means an enjoyable experience, with temperatures in the upper 30s at their peak. 

Most of the coaches I have talked to this spring have understandably expressed their frustration with not being able to get their teams outside to practice. You can only take so many grounders on a gym floor and banging tennis balls against a wall before you get frustrated. 

Simply put, athletes aren’t going to be adequately prepared by the time their first games role around —  not for lack of effort on their or their coaches part, but for the fact that you just can’t replicate an outdoor sport indoors. 

That being said, solutions to this problem are hard to come by. 

The most obvious one would be to push the start date for the spring seasons back by a couple of weeks, but that seems to have been thoroughly shot down by the PIAA.

One of the reasons for that a large portion state doesn’t have to deal with the same issues that exist in the northern counties. Plus, with the population being far less in the top half of the state then the bottom half, it isn’t seen as a priority. 

I’m not saying that the southern counties don’t experience bad weather in the spring, but they are able to get outside and practice much sooner than their northern counterparts.

I can’t blame the southern schools for not wanting to take part in pushing the season back. Why should they? The weather affects them much less and why should they subject themselves to pushing the spring season back several weeks beyond the school year?

I can also see the concern from the PIAA standpoint. The state championships in spring sports already extend beyond the normal school year. Pushing that back a couple weeks would take it almost to the end of June. 

Game managers and school administrators would be hard to come by that late into the month, as most of them want to take time off after the school year. 

Those are just several reasons why extending the season wouldn’t be feasible in the eyes of the powers that be. 

So what is the solution?

Apart from building indoor facilities, something I’ve seen jokingly (and sometimes more seriously) bantered about on Twitter in recent days, there isn’t a great one out there. 

Athletes and coaches will simply have to do the best they can given the situation, which admittedly isn’t great. To their credit, I think they have done a pretty good job of that. 

The good news is that most everyone in the area will be on an equal playing field and once the games, matches and meets do get under way, there will be plenty of talented teams and athletes to keep your eye on. 

Here’s hoping we get to see them sooner rather than later.