Long lasting snow makes spring sports practices tricky

It’s been a running joke around these parts for a good, long time.

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association sets the date for the start of spring sports season as the Monday of state basketball tournament week.

And then Mother Nature laughs.

You have to give her credit – she has a wicked sense of humor.

That’s why, on the first day of turnouts, virtually all of the area’s fields were covered with a crusty blanket of snow. The kind of crusty snow that, when the sun does peek out and shine for a few minutes, it reflects off the snow like a sunbeam caroming off a mirror.

It’s pretty to look at. But when it comes to spring sports, it has zero usefulness.

Even when the local humans put their heads and backs together, Mother Nature has the last laugh.

A reader passed along what happened at Ferris High School as a prime example.

The Saxon baseball team decided that holding tryouts in the school gym wasn’t fair, so they got together their snow shovels and spent an entire practice session last week clearing off the baseball field and hauling off the landlocked icebergs that covered, well, everything.

By the end of the afternoon, they’d cleared the whole field and were eagerly looking forward to Day 2 of practice being held outside.

So that night Mother Nature covered the whole field with a brand, spanking new blanket of snow.

Practice, needless to say, moved back inside.

Other area coaches have had a little better success.

Girls track coach Shane Toy at East Valley got busy ahead of time.

“I brought my snow blower the Sunday before track started and cleared the track and runways,” he said in an email.

Believe it or not, he wrote, the Knights have been on the track since the third day of turnouts.

“You gotta love Spring Track in Spokane!” he wrote.

Typically, the weather in the Greater Spokane area makes track teams slow-walk the first week or so of practice, and as a result, they end up a little behind programs in warmer areas like Clarkston and the Tri-Cities – areas referred to as “the banana belt.”

You have to wonder if the gap will be a tad wider this year.

Baseball and softball have a definite handicap. A great deal of what they do in a game is tied to the condition of the field of play.

Longtime University softball coach Jon Schuh has seen it all over the years.

A year ago his field was perfectly groomed and conditioned before the first day of turnouts. The infield was smooth and ready for ground balls as soon as the players left the locker room.

This year is the polar opposite (pun intended).

“Sunday was the first day I could see the dirt on the varsity field, so other than driving my four-wheeler on top of the snow two weeks ago to break it up, I haven’t been out there,” he said in an email.

The Titans have been outdoors getting in their workouts, he said. Mostly they’ve found patches of open grass to use while they wait for their softball field to melt.

Baseball and softball teams can get a great deal done with indoor practice sessions. Most schools have batting cages in the gym and players can get in their early season cuts.

“The players are getting a lot of quality indoor at bats,” Schuh wrote. “Let’s hope that translates to good ones once we get outside.”

While fielding off a gym floor does little to prepare infielders for what awaits outside, throwing practice works just fine indoors or out.

To be honest, most baseball programs have indoor throwing programs for pitchers and catchers throughout the winter, so the arms are used to getting their innings in off a plywood pitching mound.

Tennis? Golf?

Those coaches, too, find ways to adapt. Snow shovels can clean off tennis courts and golfers can work on different parts of their game in open spaces.

Most of all, they remain pragmatists.

“We have been pretty lucky with our weather the last 19 years I have been coaching in the Greater Spokane League and we do need the snowpack, so it is what it is,” Schuh wrote.

Weather is one of those things that is out of our control. Schuh said the real race will come once the weather breaks and coaches and grounds crews race to get fields ready for games.

Take this as an omen if you will, but Whitworth officially canceled all softball games until March 28.