“In the western Mass. sporting community, April is the cruelest month.” — T.S. Eliot, probably
Cruel is in the eye of the beholder, of course. But for the purposes of this rant, I mean article, the above statement is most certainly accurate.
In Franklin County, April showers are a rite of passage. Like eating a pie from Village Pizza, or coming up with a punny Instagram caption for a Bridge of Flowers selfie.
But who, might you ask, dislikes the month of April the most? Good question. Probably parks and recreation workers in charge of preparing fields. Or athletic directors. Unless they like long email chains with the subject headline: “Rain today?”
Most don’t.
Take pragmatic Frontier Regional School AD Marty Sanderson. When he retires in June, the long-time athletic director won’t be yearning for those rainy, South Deerfield April afternoons.
“April showers will not be something that any athletic director will miss when they get out of their job, that’s for sure,” said Sanderson amid another rainy Monday in the county.
His Red Hawks saw the full gamut of weather decisions, Monday. The baseball team rode the bus to Athol, began what was to be a very interesting early-season Hampshire League crossover game, finished two innings and couldn’t continue due to driving rains. Play was suspended with Frontier ahead, 4-0, and it’ll be resumed from that spot on Thursday.
The Frontier softball team battled the elements against Taconic during a home game in South Deerfield, got through all seven innings despite the wet weather and dropped a 5-4 decision to the Braves.
Two games, two different playing conditions in different towns with different outcomes. Don’t let anyone tell you this whole scheduling thing is easy.
“You look like an idiot no matter what you do,” said Sanderson with a laugh. “In a 12-hour span (Sunday into Monday), the timing of the rain changed four times. I’ve learned a lot about meteorology just looking at the radar 50,000 times a day. But it’s pretty much impossible.”
Over in the Powertown, Turners Falls High School AD Adam Graves was also scrambling, Monday. It began as a lovely, sun-filled morning in the village, with customers rushing in and out of Scottys on the Hill. But the weather deteriorated and Graves, who had already postponed the afternoon’s boys’ tennis match with Westfield, was forced to spring into action just before the school day came to a close. The outcome? The Turners-Mahar baseball game was postponed just before 2 p.m. The softball game with Granby was still on, as was a home track meet against Frontier. No thunder, luckily.
“It’s so hard,” began Graves of the scheduling aspect of his job. “Today started off 75 and sunny, as of 1:30 everything was good to go. Then the radar changed. Days like today make it tough. We had kids coming down to the office non-stop, asking what’s going on. You feel bad because people are trying to plan. But we just don’t know what’s going to happen all the time.”
Tennis takes the brunt of the fury Mother Nature throws our way, in a sporting sense. Wet courts are safety liabilities. Oftentimes, from a reporting perspective, tennis matches are the first tilts postponed with the threat of poor weather on the way.
“Tennis is its own animal, that’s for sure,” Sanderson offered.
The tennis community is certainly familiar with the old “rain equals no play” adage. Greenfield boys tennis coach Andrew Varnon was resigned to his team’s fate last week when wet weather led to a postponement in a match between his Green Wave and Sabis International Charter School. His resulting Tweet?
“Weather 1, Tennis 0. #SpringSportsinNewEngland.”
The cruelness of April rears its ugliness in ways other than rain. Staying in the Emerald City, Greenfield’s track & field teams began the spring without the services of their long jump pits because of a winter hangover. As officials deemed the apparatus unsafe for competition, the Green Wave were forced to forfeit all the points in the long and triple jump events during early-season meets. The girls team still went 2-1 despite being behind the eight-ball.
The toughest people in show business this month? Those would be volleyball players. We’ve only got one boys’ volleyball team in our coverage area these days, our friends over in Athol. As if there was ever any doubt, this spring has proven yet again that they make ’em tough in the Tool Town. The Red Raiders haven’t had a single match rained out. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Mallet Gymnasium has the ultimate drainage system.
Here we are, some eight days remaining in April, and the month of May has never been more desirable. We’ve got a few track teams who haven’t even competed in a meet yet. This is the time of year where things start to get bunched up. That’s not the worst thing for some teams, tired of the every day monotony that practice can provide. But baseball is perhaps the biggest victim of our cruel month, with teams inevitably subjected to four and five game weeks during the month of May. That’s not ideal for pitching staffs often taxed and thin to begin with.
“As an AD, you’re thinking, ‘What’s going to give your team the best opportunity to compete?” Graves said. “Last year, we had a situation where baseball had to play four games in four days and I think that definitely took a toll on (pitching). You do your best to avoid those situations so that you’re not setting up your teams for failure.”
Sanderson concurred.
“Spring is such a small season, a short season, and in baseball especially you have such a tight window that you’re worrying about pitching arms,” the Frontier head man explained. “It becomes a big problem.”
Big problems indeed abound in April. Here in New England, that isn’t going to change any time soon. All we can do is embrace the rain, embrace the mud, and celebrate the impending beautiful afternoons we deserve that may or may not be coming.
Like today. This afternoon’s forecast calls for partly sunny and 70 degrees. That sounds OK, right?
April, what a great month.