With today’s forecast calling for anywhere from five to nine inches of snow and temperatures only in the 20s, it appears that spring sports are finished for the month of March.

That is unless you are playing indoor tennis or competing at an indoor track meet like at Brandywine and Niles.

Looking at the 16-day forecast, temperatures are predicted to stay well below normal through March 23 and there are possibilities of snow at least twice next week.

Because of that, area athletic directors are starting to look at moving their March dates to April and May. But at some point, there may not be any room to move them depending on how many dates are lost.

Niles has not officially moved any games, but Vikings’ Athletic Director Jeff Upton isn’t too optimistic about getting any in until after spring break.

“I sit here and I cannot predict the weather. I am not the Farmer’s Almanac,” he said. “You do the best that you can. Three years ago, my first year, it was like 70 or 80 degrees out the first week of spring practice. Last year we had all that rain. You just never know.”

Upton added that it is a bit depressing to drive around and see grass in some yards and then look at the Niles athletic fields and you see nothing but snow.

“People want us to get out there with shovels and things, but if you do that you can damage the fields,”
Upton added.

Dowagiac and Brandywine have already moved games — a baseball game between the Chieftains and Bobcats scheduled for March 24 has been pushed back to May.

“In all reality, we are not going to have games in March,” Dowagiac AD Brent Nate said. “We are going to have to do some creative scheduling.”

Nate also recalled moving games around last spring due to rain. He and the other athletic directors also remember all too well the weather conditions this January that forced them to lose basketball games and wrestling matches or move them into an already packed February.

To make matters a bit worse, the athletic directors were notified this week by the soccer official assignor that any game canceled due to the weather in March will not get made up.

“I would guess that’s about 30 games in the month of March that won’t get made up,” Brandywine AD Vance Stratton said. “They will just be lost because it will be impossible to make them up because there won’t be enough officials.”

Stratton added that, of the 15 or so area schools, all had one or two games scheduled toward the end of March.

“Unless a miracle happens and the fields dry out, they just aren’t going to be played,” he said. “We had two soccer games in March and then we don’t play again until April 9. That’s probably more realistic. It just depends on how much snow we get tomorrow (Wednesday) and how long it stays cold.”

Niles will open the 2014 spring sports season as it competes in Allendale at the Grand Valley State University Laker Challenge March 19-20.

Brandywine’s first sporting event will be the indoor tournament it hosts at the Lakeland Athletic Club on March 22.