Thursday, April 3, 2008
By STEVE PORTER
I’ve been told the spring high school sports season officially came bounding down the runaway on March 21, the first day that winter left us.
Somebody forgot to tell Mother Nature.
We’ve seen rain, sleet, hail and chilly temperatures off and on since then. It seems as if the weather changes dramatically every day, affecting sports such as baseball, softball, track and field, soccer and tennis.
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Local athletics directors are revising the schedules of their teams like Grandma rearranging dominos or junior juggling the pieces of a puzzle. Games get moved to other venues or mostly switched to different days.
It’s work, though not necessarily in progress.
Part of the problem is that teams are scheduling games way too early. One local school had its spring opener set for March 10, or 10 days before winter ended and five days before the end of the state finals for Class 3A-4A basketball.
The overlap is becoming more evident. It’s no wonder athletes playing mutiple sports are going the way of dinosaurs. There’s no time to take a deep breath and relax between seasons.
I know. Everybody wants to play as many games as possible. Yet how convenient is it to schedule a flock of games in mid-March, when many of them won’t get played until mid-April or later?
You can play some soccer matches or hold track meets in reasonably inclement weather, but softball and baseball are different animals. Tennis is sort of the X factor in all of this.
Frankly, nobody should be playing baseball or softball until the last week of March, if that soon. April 1 was once the date to start spring sports.
Things do change, but not always for the better. If one team gets to start early, then everybody seeks to do it. Pretty soon, the IHSA might OK spring games the first week of March.
And then they’ll be snowed out.

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