Spring sports delayed in ND due to snow

BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) - You do not have to be much of a weather watcher to figure out that the high school spring sports season will not start on time. High schools do not have the luxury of some college programs that are able to head south to get games in while snow blankets the state.

It’s an annual spring battle with Mother Nature and we understand starting on time is not really an option this year.

“We’ve had a schedule for a long time, and we’ll continue to have that schedule until basically, we know that, hey, it’s not going to happen and then you begin the whole puzzle of trying to piece that thing back together,” said Dave Zittleman, BPS athletic director.

Zittleman says if too many games get canceled then it could become an issue for some sports that have a required number of games needed for post-season purposes.

“If you cancel a track meet it’s not that big of a deal,” said Zittleman. “You lose a competition but a round-robin sport like soccer and baseball and softball and tennis, you have to play those matches in order to get a standing and advance and all of those things so that’s where it makes it difficult and piling games on top of each other can get to be very difficult, so it’s a task that our A.D.’s in the conference and state are having to deal with in putting that together and somehow, someway it will all come together.”

Places with turf fields will probably get games in long before those that have to wait for the snow to melt and the ground to dry.

“Once you get that opened up a little bit and you see that little bit of green it melts pretty good and so we’ve already started that process at the Sanford Sports Complex and at the Bowl,” said Zittleman. “Here in the next ten days, we’re going to be on there with a lot of machinery trying to get a lot of that snow moved just so we can get some turn showing, get the tracks clear, and then we have to deal with tennis courts and I guess I don’t even know where to start with the golf courses, so we have lots of different things to look at this spring. Our coaches and our athletes are resilient. They’ll go to work indoors. We’ll have a practice plan for all of our facilities and try to accommodate the best we can.”

Tuesday, Jeff Roberts will give us a look at the Community Bowl as we try to get the spring sports season started as soon as possible.

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