Inclement weather forces spring sports to get creative

By Brian Eller - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Ahh, spring time.

The time when cold weather and harsh winds are replaced by sunshine and cool breezes, when sports move from the courts and the gymnasiums to the baseball diamonds and soccer fields.

But so far this season, the sounds of bats hitting balls and practice whistles chirping from the fields haven't been heard. They're all trapped inside the schools, still waiting for the opportunity to get outside.

Even a month after the blizzard that dumped more than 2 feet of snow across the Shenandoah Valley, the effects are still being felt by high school athletic programs. The fields are still unsuitable to practice on. Some fields are still snow-covered in spots. And those that are clear of snow still haven't had time to dry out. It's forced teams everywhere to make some radical adjustments.

"Well, I can tell you at practices, so far we're real good at throwing snowballs," James Wood High School softball coach Ted McDaniel joked. For McDaniel, his team has yet to see any practice time out on an actual field. Most sessions have been held in one the school's gymnasiums, where the players practice fielding grounders off the hardwood rather than infield dirt.

Things are the same for the Colonels' baseball coach, Jared Mounts. Prior to the season starting, 31 people came to James Wood and helped shovel out the batting cage area and bullpen area, simply in an effort to speed up the melting process. A scrimmage originally scheduled for today at Strasburg has been pushed back. Meanwhile, Mounts has had his team in the gym on most days, but was able to hold some practices in the school parking lot.

"It is frustrating not to get out," he said. "We use our parking lot a good bit. We put some bases up in the parking lot and we scrimmaged [last] Saturday and did a tee and soft toss. We've been doing what we can. We've been throwing outside, taking ground balls, fly balls and working on the fundamentals. Hopefully that'll carry over once we're able to step onto the field and start playing."

Over at Handley, baseball coach Eddie Simmons said tryouts received the highest number of players in recent memory, but with the inability to practice on an actual field, the selection process has taken much longer than in years past.

"It's been different because a few years ago we had 70-degree weather during tryouts, and we're doing all of this outside and we could see what we were doing," Simmons said. "This year we felt like tryouts took a little bit longer because we had to give kids extra opportunities to show us what they can do, and you don't get to see quite as much. It stinks to have to cut some kids without seeing them on a baseball field, but you don't really have a choice. You have to make your evaluations and do what you can."

Practices have been even tougher at Clarke County. One of the older schools in the area, Clarke County has just one gymnasium, and up until a few weeks ago, it was used primarily by the basketball teams. Now, with so many spring sports needing time and only one gym to accommodate them, there simply isn't enough space for teams to practice sufficiently. To combat the space shortage, softball coach Susan Grubbs said she's taken her team to different places to practice. With more than two decades of coaching experience with the Eagles, she said it's all about using the options available.

"This is my 23rd year now and I've never seen anything like this," Grubbs said. "Here it's especially tough because we only have one gym and up until a week ago or so, it was used for basketball, so it's tough to find places to practice. But we've adjusted. We've sent kids up to different schools to practice, and you just have to be creative."

And while the preseason practices have been tough to adjust to, the effects of the winter weather may not even be felt until long after the snow is gone. At Sherando, baseball coach Pepper Martin and his staff have been preparing for the possibility of a condensed schedule once games can get under way. With teams likely having to play multiple games a week, the need for a deeper roster becomes more prevalent.

"Coach [Craig] Bodenschantz is working on developing some depth in our pitching staff," Martin said, "and that's because he anticipates the possibility of us having a compressed schedule, particularly early on when we finally get outside because we may end up having three or as many as four games a week if we get backed up, and in order to get through that we're going to have to have more than five or six arms available."

Despite the added frustration with the weather, all of the coaches in the area realize they are in the same boat, and it's up to them to help their players be ready when the season starts, even if it isn't until summer.

"The kids have worked hard and are hitting the ball very well," Warren County baseball coach Vernon Mathews said. "Of course, it's off of a machine most of the time, but the kids are throwing hard, too. We've accomplished the maximum of what we can accomplish, so I'm happy with that."