While things can change, rain showers are in the forecast for Southwest Washington this coming weekend.
That’s distressing news for the handful of Twin Harbors baseball and softball teams seeing action on “Super Saturday,” the day most district and regional tournaments are contested.
The fallout from any postponements doesn’t have to be chaotic. But it usually is, because of postseason scheduling that few allowances for weather delays and the inability of tournament officials to develop a consistent Plan B in the event of postponements.
State competition in most spring sports generally is slated for Memorial Day weekend. It can’t go much later, since many school districts schedule graduation ceremonies for the first weekend in June.
Scheduling all district and regional tournaments to end on the Saturday prior to state is therefore exceptionally risky. It might be even riskier to contest state baseball and softball tournaments without a viable weather-related backup plan.
The best thing that can be said about the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association’s administration of state tournament postponements is that tourney officials invariably find a way to crown state champions within a day or two of the scheduled expiration date.
When no playable fields could be found in Yakima for the 2013 Class 1A baseball semifinals, the semifinalists (including eventual state runner-up Montesano) were dispatched to the Tri-Cities for the final two games.
Consistency, however, hasn’t always been the WIAA’s forte. I’ve covered three state softball tournaments that have been suspended by rain. The format for completing the tourneys once play resumed differed on each occasion.
There’s less excuse for pushing district and regional tournaments to the limit.
Southwest Washington district softball tournaments, for example, usually don’t begin until 10-14 days following the completion of league play. There’s no reason why the tournaments couldn’t be spread over two weeks to minimize the necessity of playing multiple games on one day when adverse weather could intervene.
Regional baseball is a trickier enterprise, since it involves participants traveling much greater distances for a one-day tournament.
Keeping open the option of playing on a Friday would be one possible alternative. Another might be placing a higher priority on assigning regionals to venues with turf fields and/or covered grandstands.
Or the WIAA could appoint former Elma baseball coach Scott Rowland as its postseason scheduling commissioner.
Although he isn’t, to the best of my knowledge, a licensed meteorologist, Rowland was more attuned to weather patterns than any coach I’ve ever covered.
If the Eagles were idle on a dry Monday but scheduled to host Hoquiam on a Tuesday in which rain was forecast, Rowland often would contact the visiting coach and the appropriate umpiring association and arrange to play Monday on short notice. Hoquiam coach Steve Jump usually was happy to oblige.
Spectators and the media weren’t always aware of when Elma games would transpire. But it was amazing how frequently the Eagles were caught up schedule-wise when their league rivals had a backlog of three or four makeup games.
There are, of course, area athletes and coaches who are undoubtedly amused at any weather-related baseball and softball travails. Postseason soccer and track will be contested as scheduled regardless of the weather.
Too darned hot
Area track athletes faced a different weather issue during league meets last week at Montesano and Raymond. Temperatures in the mid-80s definitely were not welcomed by many of the competitors.
At Montesano, the heat caused several instances of cramping and at least one major-league case of nausea. During one stage of the meet, Montesano athletic trainer Justine Nuckols was covering more territory than many of the runners.
One of the problems was the difficulty in adjusting from a typical spring meet at such traditionally cold-weather venues as Hoquiam’s Sea Breeze Oval.
“We’ve had no transition,” Hoquiam coach Tim Pelan explained. “We’ve gone from 50 (degrees) to 90.”
Meanwhile, spectators at the 1A meet at Montesano’s Rottle Field were treated to a state-of-the-art scoreboard located near the finish line. It listed not only the lane assignments but offered instantaneous results of the running events.
The scoreboard was provided by Athletic Timing, a subsidiary of the company that operates the athletic.net online service.
Attending the Nike coaches clinic in Beaverton, Ore., Montesano boys coach Brian Hollatz won a raffle to use the company’s service for one meet only this year.
Since this was a one-shot deal, that means Montesano probably won’t have the scoreboard when it hosts the Ray Ryan Memorial All-County Championships next spring.
Unless Hollatz gets lucky in another raffle.
