Spring tryouts were finished in the final week of February, marking the end of the winter season and start of the spring season. However, the tryouts were not completed as smoothly as the athletes, coaches, and trainers would have hoped.

Why were the spring tryouts so problematic? With the school construction, the focus has recently turned to revamping the athletic facilities and fields.

The construction has hit the baseball and softball programs the hardest, as their fields are currently not completely ready, and unplayable. Because of this, both programs spent the majority of tryouts working on the field to help get it ready for the regular season, opposed to spending time practicing on the field. Besides working on their fields, the baseball and softball programs did practicing hitting in the wrestling room, and went to the weight room as well. Many athletes thought this change of pace made tryouts more difficult as well.

“Tryouts were a little harder because of how many people were trying out, and it’s hard to show off what you can really do when you are in a small gym,” said sophomore Haley Chilton who plays left field.

Besides the construction, snow and icy rain storms contributed to delaying the tryouts. Many other spring teams such as lacrosse, soccer, tennis, and crew’s tryouts were also canceled. This made for a shorter amount of time for tryouts.

“[For lacrosse] we did a little running, ran some drills, and on Saturday we had a team scrimmage,” said sophomore Timmy Ormsby.

These cancellations caused most teams to be unable to complete all the aspects of tryouts. For example, the baseball and softball programs were not able to practice positioning on the field for as long as they would have hoped.

Despite the delayed and problematic tryouts, the snow did not hit some teams as hard as others.

“Lacrosse is played on turf, so we can usually play in most weather conditions, so tryouts were almost every day from Monday to Saturday,” said sophomore Hunter Skibicki.

Consequently,  lacrosse only missed one day of tryouts–a day when school was cancelled due to snow.

“Missing one day wasn’t that big of a deal because the tryouts were run like normal practices, so it was not that much of a loss,” said Skibicki.

The spring teams did push themselves even harder, however, to make up for the snow day, and are preparing to play the best they can for the season.

“The day before and after the snow day our coaches had pushed us more just to help make up for the lost day,” said Skibicki.