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| Tiger Stadium April 16, 2013 |
The 2013 Minnesota response to that question seems to be "Apparently not."
Since April 1, FHS athletic director Jon Summer has arranged for the cancellation or postponement of 97 different events at a variety of competitive levels.
During that same period, a grand total of five varsity level events have been held--three indoor track meets, a baseball game at the Metrodome and one outdoor tennis match.
"This is the worst spring weather-wise I've seen since I've been an athletic director," Summer said. "It's just not trying to re-schedule events but making sure the transportation, officials and site supervisors are secured.
"I feel bad for the coaches and athletes, especially the seniors. It's a challenge to stay at a high competitive level when you don't have opportunities to compete."
The Missota Conference has taken a definitive step in helping re-schedule league baseball and softball games. The entire first round of the double round-robin schedule has been scrapped with all team playing doubleheaders on the date and at the site of the scheduled second round contests.
"It's not ideal, but it frees up some dates so that we might be able to re-schedule more of the non-conference games," Summer said.
The other seven sports have their own unique problems with the brutal weather. The golfers haven't hit a ball outside yet. Tennis hasn't seen many dry court days and lacrosse and track facilities have been under a constant blanket of white.
"We've had people ask about shoveling off the turf, but that could end up damaging the surface," Summer said. "And the only place to shovel it is on to the track which creates another problem."
The forecast for the remainder of the week contains more of the same so all Summer and his fellow athletic directors can do is wait it out and hope spring weather really is just around the corner.
"It's a matter of making the best out of the situation," he said. "This isn't unique to us. It could be worse, we could be in northern Minnesota where they could be looking at a three of four-week season."
