Since the start of the spring season in 2018 there has been one opponent that has remained undefeated even through late May: Mother Nature.

Countless rainouts, rescheduling, and soggy fields have left teams throughout the Northeast with problems. If your school/team does not have access to a turf facility, you have been on the short end of the stick.

To do so, we will examine "Team X" – a "hypothetical" school from New Jersey.

To start, let’s do some math to map out the difficulties of this spring so far…

• 97 – From the first day of spring practice to where we are today, there have been roughly 97 days to practice, scrimmage or play games.

• 3 – There were three major snowstorms that dumped 6+ inches of snow in 3 out of the 4 weeks of March – putting most New Jersey teams indoors, and canceling scrimmages in March.

• 3 (again) – Those three snowstorms put most teams (without turf) out of outside practice or scrimmages for 3 weeks – cutting those 97 days to 76 days

• 14 – from those 76 days left after the snow storms, 14 of those days in the regular season (March 31st until today) have been eliminated because of snow and rain in the most affected spots of New Jersey – bringing us to 62 days.

• Holidays & Sundays – teams (for the most) part do not play on Good Friday, Easter, and generally do not play on Sundays throughout the regular season (barring fundraiser tournaments). Assuming “Team X” does not play on Sundays or in any of those aforementioned fundraisers – it cuts the time to play games down significantly.

• From March 4th (Sunday) to May 20th (Sunday), there were 12 Sundays (including Easter). So 62 - 12 = 50 days

• Team X did not play on Good Friday – one less day – 49 Days.

• Team X couldn’t play games in the 1st week that was left after the snow storms in March, bringing the total now to 42 Days.

42 Days it what we’re left with, and we haven’t even considered the various rain outs that were littered in between March 31st until today, so let’s consider the overall weather conditions of the spring:

• According to njweather.org – a Rutgers University website on Agricultural Experiments, the average temperature in N.J. throughout the month of April 2018 was 47.7º F, which was 3.2º F lower that the 1981–2010 average, and 2.0º F lower than the 1895-2017 average

• April precipitation across NJ averaged 4.20” in total – 0.21” above the 1981-2010 average

• April 2018 was the 38th wettest April on record (since 1895)

• In April 2018, 12 days featured a low temperature below freezing.

• North Jersey saw the most precipitation (rain and melted snow) in April – Hawthorne saw 8.19” and Passaic 7.75”

• According to weather.com in the 30 days of April, there was precipitation (rain) on 6/14 days in the first two weeks, and 16/30 total days in the month.

  • Of those 16 days it rained, 7 were around .25” of rain.

Back to our story of Team X from the spring. Let’s say Team X’s field couldn’t handle a cup of water being dumped on shortstop – that leaves us with 35 Days to play baseball

35 days does not consider the residual days after it rains that the field isn’t able to dry out in time for a 4pm start – but I won’t go that far…

35 Days to play baseball after analyzing April’s weather. Now let’s get to May…

• In 19 days in May, there has been 10 days with some type of precipitation.

• Of those 10 days it has rained, 6 have had totals of .25” or more.

But we’ve already calculated this week’s madness into our math from before.

Typically, teams will schedule around 10 scrimmages and 28 games from the first day of practice until the end of May.

That leaves a head coach with trying to fill 38 games/scrimmages in 35 days (of clear weather).

Oh – and Team X has both a junior AND senior prom, so take two more days off…

38 games/scrimmages, in 33 days.

What’s the solution?

Why not move the start of the spring season back two weeks? There have been plans to do this all ready, which were brought up by Park Ridge A.D. Chris Brown at May’s NJSIAA Meeting (as reported by Darren Cooper of NorthJersey.com) – but it makes total sense now. The average temperature of April speaks for itself.

In a game that is known for playing in the “dog days of summer” where it’s sweltering and the sun is shining, why is high school baseball get the brunt end of the deal when dealing with the end of winter in New Jersey?

I understand the need for proms and graduations – but ultimately, in a sport that is most affected by the weather and field conditions – more so than any other sport played at the high school level – what is truly the issue with playing another week or two into June? The end of May and early part of June is when the weather is at its best anyway..

UPCOMING NJ EVENTS
Summer Preview North – Open to 2019s – 2021s >>

Summer Preview South – Open to 2019s – 2021s >>

 

MORE NJ NEWS