Rainy weather forces prep teams to scramble

While just about everyone in Central Virginia is grateful for all the rain so far this spring, there is a handful of people — namely, area high school athletic directors — who wouldn’t mind seeing the precipitation disappear, if only for just a little bit.

“Any AD you talk to, they’ll tell you it’s been one of the worst springs in their career,” said Charlottesville athletic director Rick Lilly. “Myself, I’ve only been in this for two years, but talking to the people that have done this for 20 years, no one can remember a spring this bad.”

Over the past two months, scheduling an event from baseball to tennis and everything in between has been a daunting task to say the least.

“In 18 of our 33 play dates, we’ve had to reschedule or cancel,” said Western Albemarle AD Steve Heon.

While the percentages of cancellations and delays vary from school to school, close to 40 percent of events have been postponed or canceled outright. Non-district opponents have been the first to put on ice, but with only a few weeks until the postseason begins, it’s possible that teams won’t be able to finish their district schedules.

“Anything rained out right now is going to be hard to play,” Heon said. “At some point the [Jefferson District] is going to have a drop-dead date, and we haven’t set it yet, but it would say that everything ends on this date and whether or not all the schools get their games, we’ll just have to seed the tournaments based on winning percentages.”

In an effort to try and play as many games as possible, Monticello AD Fitzgerald Barnes has scrapped the idea of home-field advantage.

“Right now, if a game is scheduled to be played away and my field is in better condition, or vice versa, we’ve been switching it around,” Barnes said. “We’re just trying to get these games in. Whoever has a facility that’s ready, we’ve just been sending our teams over there.”

And it’s not just the weather that has ADs jumping through hoops. Advanced placement exams and SOLs are on the horizon. At least those occur on the same dates, but other scheduling hurdles aren’t so concrete like spring break — and then, who could forget, the prom.

“Just in our district, we have two different spring breaks,” said Albemarle athletic director Deb Tyson. “We have three different proms. No one wants to play on those dates.”

Perhaps no school has had it tougher than Albemarle.

“I counted it today just to see it for myself, and we’ve canceled and rescheduled 76 games,” Tyson said.

The seven Jefferson District schools are packed in relatively close, with the longest distance between Western Albemarle and Louisa County, about an hour drive between the two. However, the Patriots play in the Commonwealth District against teams from the Fredericksburg area. Teams like Brooke Point are a full two hours away, making travel costs a major problem.

“You can’t send a bus up to Brooke Point, not have them play, and then send them up later,” Tyson said. “It’s just too expensive.”

Now, with just about every team from every school booked to play on every possible play day from here to the end of the regular season in early May, there has been the added hassle of a bus driver shortage.

There has been one major variable that hasn’t been an issue — officiating.

“I think they’re the unsung heroes,” said St. Anne’s-Belfield AD Doug Tarring. “They’ve been so flexible, it’s really amazing.”

Of course, some sports have suffered more than others this spring. So far, tennis has been the biggest weather victim by far, with teams like the Western Albemarle girls having only played four of the sixteen matches they had scheduled.

After that, baseball and softball follow closely behind, as they can’t tolerate much more than a drizzle, save last week’s games between the William Monroe and Fluvanna County baseball and softball teams, which decided to play on in monsoon-like conditions.

“The bottom line is that we just have to do what’s best for the kids,” Tyson said. “It’s been a real challenge, but the kids just want to play.”

Lacrosse and soccer teams are the most likely to play, as the biggest issues are the players’ footing and the potential damage to the playing surface.

Speaking of playing surfaces, there is one school that has had a little more success in playing their events. The St. Anne’s-Belfield lacrosse teams haven’t run into any major scheduling problems, thanks in large part to their artificial turf field.

“We’ve been pretty lucky,” Tarring said. “Our boys lacrosse team had to reschedule for the first time [on Tuesday] against Fork Union because of lightning. So we’ve been fortunate there.”

Playing on the same kind of surfaces that you see in many NFL stadiums, the artificial turf drains easily, isn’t damaged by cleats and requires next to nothing in terms of maintenance.

“The field has been a big help,” Tarring said. “Combined with the lights, it allows us to play one game after another, sometimes on top each other whether it’s girls then boys, or JV and then varsity.”

For that very reason, schools like Monticello are making the switch from old-fashioned sod to revolutionary plastic grass despite the hefty price tag. The Mustangs begin construction on their new field in June, which could free them from another spring like this.