Mt. Vernon’s Easton Wampler puts a tag on a Yorktown baserunner Tuesday. The HHC softball game was postponed due to inclement weather after less than one inning of play.
Mike Brown | For The Daily Reporter
Area high school students are back from spring break, and they have been greeted by more than their share of either rainy or cold days, sometimes both.
For those that participate in spring sports, that’s a problem.
And for athletic directors, it’s a really big problem when it comes to scheduling and rescheduling.
“It’s really tough. With the start of the season, everybody is dealing with spring break and trying to fit things in early. You lose a couple weeks depending on what kind of spring break you have and who you are playing,” Greenfield-Central athletic director Jared Manning said. “Then you are trying to cram all of your games into seven-eight weeks. It just gets tough when you have a couple rainouts here or there.
“Those 28 baseball games that you have scheduled, now you’re playing almost every day. With pitch-count limits, it makes it really difficult to get all of those events in and rescheduled.”
Greenfield-Central, Mt. Vernon and New Palestine are all members of the Hoosier Heritage Conference, which plays a two-game, home-and-home series with each of its schools during the baseball season.
Those games are scheduled for Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Last week was the first series for the three Hancock County schools and only one game was played on its originally scheduled date.
New Palestine, thanks to having a new artificial-turf field, was able to play its home game against HHC foe Shelbyville last Tuesday. Mt. Vernon’s opening series with Delta was postponed to Saturday April 13 and will be played as a doubleheader at Delta. Greenfield-Central got its series in with New Castle, but had to play Friday and Saturday. New Pal played the second game of its series, at Shelbyville, Friday.
Greenfield-Central was hosting Delta when Tuesday’s storm came through Hancock County.
The game was tied 1-1 in the first inning when lightning forced a mandatory 30-minute delay. There were two more lightning-in-the-area delays before heavy rains came to force postponement of Game 1 of the two-game series.
Mt. Vernon’s home and HHC softball opener Tuesday against Yorktown was also postponed in the middle of the first inning.
A number of other events were either postponed/cancelled or waiting out significant rain delays to resume play in baseball, softball, track and field, boys golf and girls tennis.
Cold weather was the big culprit last week. Most all outdoor contests from Monday-Thursday were either postponed or canceled. A number of teams were able to get events in on Saturday.
Rain is also in the forecast for today, Thursday and Friday.
“It really gets to be difficult when you have two weeks like this back to back,” Manning added.
Greenfield-Central’s tennis team was able to get an official event in on Tuesday.
The team played at Morristown and won 4-0. The fifth match was still in play when it was called due to lightning.
The Cougars benefited of taking care of business quickly, winning 24 of 28 games of the four completed contests.
Madi Succaw and Tanessa O’Neal won in singles. The teams of Hallie Smith/Lauren Haffner and Kaydence Ham/Anna McQueeney won in doubles.
