Spring sports bring to mind lush, green practice fields and warm weather. This year the reality has been less picturesque, as teams have been battling the winter snow and other teams for field time and gym space.
The snow storm in late February not only cancelled school, but buried the fields in snow. The thawing snow was again added to by the second big snow storm in early March. All this snow has caused major changes in how and where spring sport tryouts were conducted.
“We have had to practice in the Aux gym and tryouts are going to be over two weeks long,” said senior lacrosse player Allison Davis.
Teams have had to adjust their tryouts and practices to accommodate the small space of the gym with large teams. Conditioning has been a bigger part of their practices as have altered drills that can work in the space they’re given.
“We can’t do full field scrimmages in the gym which help us a lot,” said sophomore lacrosse player Nathan Fox. “We have been mostly doing small drills which aren’t as fun.”
The tryout adjustments have also made evaluating potential players harder, but coaches are trying their best to take that into account when deciding the teams.
“We have over 80 girls crammed into the gym for soccer tryouts, but I think the coaches know what they’re doing [on evaluating players],” said senior soccer player Jacque Weir. “The new players might be getting the short end of the stick though because the coaches don’t already know how they play.”
Although the spring sports teams have had to delay practice out on the fields, they are working to get ready for when the season starts. The inside practices are still benefiting the teams and spring sports teams also had this issue last year, so they are equipped to handle weather delays like this.
“I don’t think this will affect our season because we had the same situation last year,” said senior baseball player Kevin Carol. “Last year we were able to work hard and we came out ready to play but we still have some time before [we can play on the field] because there’s about a foot of snow and [the field] still has to dry.”
The teams are making the best of a difficult situation while prepping for the season.
“We hope the team this season will be up to its full potential even with this setback, and I’m confident that our practices and conditioning will have us ready to play,” said Weir.