If, as the old television commercial
once stated, “It’s not nice to
fool with Mother Nature,” she
sure has a grand old time messing
with Colorado spring athletes and
their sports.
Personally, I think she enjoys it.
The cold and wind in the Rocky Mountain region are longtime spring givens, but Wednesday’s snowstorm has made it official — Spring 2008 has turned obnoxious, as usual.
Just as the snow has mounted, so have make-up contests.
Save for swimming and diving, fill in the blanks for difficulties in six other sports. Problems with wet fields are creating a backlog certainly not unique to our state, but with just a month remaining, including for playoffs, Colorado’s usual frantic run to the spring — and school year — finish line is in full swing, a madhouse of a dash.
How do you figure? It was nearly 80 degrees in many of the state’s areas Tuesday. Competitors, coaches and followers either practiced or competed in shorts and T-shirts.
It was in the 40s, with snow and a gray sky similar to an abyss Wednesday, and most events were postponed. Today figures to be cold and wet enough to push the schedules back at least another day.
While we all know spring competitors continue to display resilience, baseball teams at John F. Kennedy and Thomas Jefferson defiantly tried to take it a step further Wednesday.
The two met at TJ in a prime Denver Prep League matchup with a first pitch at 4:15 p.m. They actually got into the bottom of the first inning — TJ built a 4-1 lead — as the infield grass turned white from the snow and the trees in the surrounding neighborhood seemed to disappear in the gray. At one point, a foul ball was ripped down a baseline. Even the umpire didn’t see it.
It was finally called after JFK pitcher Manuel Gardino started to slip down the front of the mound, which had turned into a mudslide, when following through on a delivery.
With time running out for seven sports, here’s what we know.
Even with it being tax time, baseball teams’ pitching staffs, historically not that deep in the schoolboy ranks, are paying a tariff that will last into the state tournament, that is, if they can get there.
Boys and girls lacrosse squads have grown weary of playing on mushy or rock-hard fields.
Ditto for girls soccer teams, which can’t turn on a switch to fix their pitch.
Girls golfers, who arguably operate under the worst conditions of any of Colorado’s 21 sanctioned sports, may be used to it, but even they appear ready to snap a club.
Girls tennis players have to watch the temperature as if they’re meteorologists. The ball won’t bounce correctly when it gets under 40 degrees. As it is, they have learned to play in the wind as if they’re sailors.
As for track and field, coaches remain cautious for fear of injury, and who can blame them, with the biggest meets yet to occur.
It’s almost funny, and in multiple ways. Someday soon, it will turn warm, sunny and beautiful, and stay that way into October, a fact of Rocky Mountain majesty.
And we harp on this annually, yet officials refuse to tinker with spring for fear of undermining tradition, graduation and prom.
Colorado kids will get through it, even laugh about it at another time.
But they don’t have to like it — and I happen to know they don’t.
Neil H. Devlin: 303-954-1714 or ndevlin@denverpost.com
