A forecast filled with snow is exactly the kind of challenge some local high school baseball teams were bracing for.
It’s the first year since the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association officially ended baseball as a summer sport and schools that made the switch to the spring season are dealing with anticipated challenges.
“Summer baseball was great because you’d lose so few games,” said Cedar Grove-Belgium Athletic Director Scott Parsons. “If we do get snow and a decent amount of rain in the next week, we’ll probably look at all of the [spring sports] schedules and have to make some adjustments because there’s no way you can make that all work.”
While postponements and indoor practices are nothing new for other spring sports like softball, track and golf, adding another varsity and junior varsity team into the mix means coaches need to get creative with practice times.
“There’s only so much space to go around,” Parsons said. “We’re lucky where our coaches work together really well to maximize our space and maximize our time. It gives us the ability to make a pretty effective practice time.”
Depending how long the winter weather intends to stick around, however, might make things complicated making up games.
“The other piece of it is finding umpires to work games,” said Parsons. “Finding umpires to work games where you’re making them up and lots of other people have already established games, or those trying to make them up as well.”
In preparing for the spring baseball season, Cedar-Grove Belgium upgraded the infield of their diamond to be able to handle more water, which allows it to be more playable after heavy rains or snowfall.
Overall, this year is a learning experience.
“It’s all going to work out,” Parsons said. “I think next year will be totally different because people will be in a mode of this is what we’ve always done. Once you get past a year I think it’ll be great.”