The snow may be gone, but the headaches for area athletic directors are not.

Already games for this week are being shuffled around or cancelled.

The main reason is the fields are just not ready to be played on yet.

All the rain that fell late last week didn’t help the ground that is already saturated and trying to dispose of all the moisture from being frozen all winter.

With more rain forecast for this week, that issue will not be resolved quickly.

Still, there is a glimmer of hope as schools return from spring break with the plan of getting their seasons under way.

Monday afternoon Edwardsburg was going to attempt to get a baseball doubleheader in against Brandywine.

The baseball game was originally set to be played at Brandywine High School, but their field is not ready yet and so the site was switched to Edwardsburg before eventually being postponed.

The forecast for spring is a wet one. That will not bode well for the schools as they are already at least two weeks behind schedule thanks to all the snow we got back in January and the below normal temperatures that kept it hanging around until the last week of March.

If the forecast is correct, a lot of non-league games could be lost as teams scramble to get their conference schedules completed.

That is in particularly important in the Wolverine Conference, which holds a league tournament for baseball and softball prior to the start of the state tournament.

I feel bad for the seniors, who already had their winter sports season impacted by the weather.

If they are forced to play a limited schedule, that would be a shame.

Athletic directors have limited space available in their spring schedules to shuffle games around and complete a campaign.

The other problem with rescheduling spring games is that baseball has a limit on pitching. So playing three or four games a week becomes nearly impossible unless you have a huge pitching staff.

I know that our athletic directors will do their best to ensure that the kids get to play as many games as possible this spring.

But it truly is out of their hands when it comes to the weather.

Let’s hope Mother Nature gives them a break and we get to play a full slate of games this spring.

 

Scott Novak is sports editor for Leader Publications. He can be reached at scott.novak@leaderpub.com