Softball and the weather

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By: Stephanie Sparrow, reporter

Spring weather brings spring sports. Unfortunately, even though spring is in the air, it is bringing lots and lots of rain and even snow to Carbon County. Spring means softball season, so what does all this rain mean for the team?

With talking to head coach Lori Lienhard, she told The Olympiad her thoughts about the weather, “The 2015-2016 softball season started off with warm weather and sunshine but that did not last very long. The weather turned to cold, rainy days which resulted in muddy and unsafe playing conditions on the field.’’

In order to play softball, the weather has to corporate. Wet conditions call for unsafe playing conditions, so what happens when a game gets cancelled, and how hard is it to reschedule them?

“Weather plays a very important role in the softball season. Without the cooperation of the weather, many of our games get cancelled and rescheduled forcing the players to play five days straight without a break. This has a negative impact on players with injuries and does not allow us any time to review plays to make  corrective actions to reduce our errors,” stated Coach Lienhard. “We try not to make our girls play five games within a week, but with this weather it is hard to. The team was already almost a week behind schedule the second week into the season due to all the washouts.”

This season there are just under twenty girls on the team. This means they can not afford an injury with any teammate. Also, this calls for some of the girls to be double suited, which means they play both varsity and junior varsity.

Jillian Kamieniecki, a Junior at Jim Thorpe High School, is one of the few girls who are double suited. She tells The Olympiad, “This is my second year playing and it is really time consuming being a double suit. I like how I get to play more, but when you have games every day of the week, it’s hard, especially when most games are doubleheaders, because that means I play two games in a day.”

Like every sport, it is important for the teammates to get along. If there is no harmony on the field, plays will not be executed the correct way and there will be a lot of mistakes.

According to Leah Detweiler, a junior, “We have a small, close knit group on and off the field this year, which is good because we bond and know each other. When it comes to games and we know that one of our girls are having an off day, we know we need to step up and be there for her.  The only disadvantage I would say we have this year is that since our team is so small, if a teammate gets injured, almost every position on the field switches. Our girls need to know how to play more than one position, and when a girl gets thrown into spots she hasn’t had much practice in, the games do not go as well as they could.”

 

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