Wherever you go around the United States, the prevailing thought is that it always rains in the Seattle area.
For the last month, that prevailing thought is exactly what has happened and the wet weather has not been much fun for the baseball, softball and tennis teams at Beamer, Decatur, Federal Way and Thomas Jefferson high schools.
“The rain has been horrible this year,” said Decatur head baseball coach Maury Kincannon. “Worse than I can ever remember.”
Most meteorological pundits are crediting La Niña with delivering the abnormally wet weather to Western Washington during the last two months. But, whatever the reason, the inundation of rain is wreaking havoc with South Puget Sound League schedule makers.
During the month of March, it rained 6.29 inches, including a record 1.47 inches on March 9. That is a far cry from the average precipitation for March in the Seattle area, which is 3.75 inches. There were only three days during the month when it didn’t rain.
To illustrate just how bad the rain has been during the current spring sports season, Kincannon’s Gators have only practiced outside three times on the Decatur baseball field since turnout started on Feb. 28. And only two of those times has the team been able to conduct a full practice on the dirt infield.
That means a bulk of the baseball, softball and tennis practice time has been inside the school’s gym, where there is only so much that can be accomplished.
Basically, baseball and softball pitchers can throw bullpen sessions, hitters can take a few swings inside a batting cage, infielders can field ground balls off a perfectly flat wooden floor and players can run sprints. Tennis players can hit balls against the wall.
“It has been very difficult for the players,” Kincannon said. “It’s not fun practicing in the gym everyday. In addition, it is not always as productive as you would like it to be when practicing in the gym. Decatur only has one gym, so we are sharing time with the softball team, tennis team, track, etc.”
Coaches will try to switch things up a little bit in the gym by playing things like Wiffle Ball or having basketball shooting contests to keep things loose and fun. But every player would rather be outside playing against another school.
Another byproduct of La Niña and the constant spring rains is a busy schedule during the remaining SPSL regular season, which is slated to end April 29. Essentially, the baseball and softball teams will be playing games pretty much every available, non-rainy day until the playoffs start up. The Decatur Gators, for example, had only played three SPSL 3A league games as of Monday.
“Now we are in a sitution that we will have five games a week for the next two weeks,” Kincannon said. “Not sure how we are going to have the pitching for this, but I think everyone is in the same situation, so we will have to make it work, somehow.”
Pitching is the obvious aspect of baseball that is affected most by playing multiple games on consecutive days. With all of the rainouts, teams with the most pitching depth are the ones that will be moving on to the postseason.
The fastpitch teams in Federal Way are in a totally different situation than baseball squads. There are no rules in softball that regulate how much a certain pitcher can throw in a given week.
According to the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) handbook, when a baseball player pitches four innings or more in a game, the pitcher can’t pitch again until two calendar days have past. And one pitch constitutes an inning.
The usual recipe for a softball team is to basically use one pitcher the entire season, so teams really aren’t affected that much if they play one game in a week or five.
