I’ll admit, I’m not much of a weather person.
It’s literally one of the most mundane things to discuss, and oftentimes comes up when you have nothing else to say in a conversation.
Pretty much the only time I do pay attention is during the spring, more specifically because of the spring sports season.
Spring sports can be a tricky thing to navigate, and not just by one entity. Whether its athletic directors having to do massive amounts of rescheduling, coaches trying to figure out what to do when a game is canceled, athletes trying to prepare knowing full well their event might not get played on a certain day and officials have to reshuffle their schedule, it’s something they all have to deal with it.
They have to deal with it because, well, it’s spring in western Pennsylvania.
I’m writing this now, because as I sit here, the forecast for the rest of this week looks bleak in the hopes of getting baseball and softball games, track meets, and tennis matches in.
Rain all day on Tuesday and Wednesday with temperature failing to get out of the 40s, and snow on Thursday and Friday.
I ran into one coach over the weekend, and he said, without hesitation, that his team wouldn’t be playing this week. He, along with many other coaches, saw the same forecast I did. There was a little bit of exasperation in his voice coupled with, well what can you do, it’s what we have to deal with.
It can be incredibly frustrating, and it affects all sports, although perhaps none more so than baseball. Most small schools, heck, most big schools don’t have the pitching to cover a stretch of playing games three or four days in a row, which in many cases can happen on the backend of a schedule with so many postponements. That’s true even more so with the pitch count limits and days off required by the PIAA. Don’t get me wrong, those limits are in place for a reason, as they definitely should be, but the fact of the matter is most teams find difficulties during those stretches.
And then there is the matter of playing conditions. You can get a day that can be good enough to play weather wise, but if the field isn’t ready to go because it’s absorbed so much precipitation, then that adds another factor into the equation.
It’s nobody’s fault, really. It’s just the nature of the beast. What I will say is that the athletic directors that I know do a fantastic job of shifting around schedules as best they can. There are a lot of logistics that go into it, and they are to be commended for what could maybe best be described as putting together a puzzle.
And this isn’t something that is just unique to the high school level.
Both St. Bonaventure and Pitt-Bradford had already announced postponements for Tuesday’s baseball games by Monday afternoon. It isn’t totally uncommon for colleges to do this but do it so far in advance shows you just how bleak the weather looks the next few days.
Hopefully the forecast isn’t as bad as anticipated this week and some games and meets and matches can be played.
If not, however, it certainly won’t be anything new. And athletic directors, coaches, athletes and officials will once again start putting together that puzzle.
