The Fastpitch Chronicle

Hey Pa, There's snow on the roof!

Heck, there's snow on the diamonds too. Rice Lake with more than 17" today. Baldwin-Woodville area with 15, Spring Valley with 14 Pepin with 13 and all the others softball fields in that swatch of miserable weather since yesterday means more disappoinment for everyone.

It didn't snow in Poynette but the snow in that part of the state caused some extra work for me on the Master Board tonight. At about 6:30 I received an e-mail from Baldwin-Woodville softball coach Rick Coltrain informing me that the 15 inches they got is forcing them to travel over into Minnesota where it didn't snow to makeup today's conference game. They are not coming to the Jamboree because of it. I certainly understand that situation. It didn't make my night any more enjoyable though. In the end I was able to rearrange things but it affected quite a few teams and umpires.

Here is the e-mail I sent to all the coaches and athletic directors in the jamboree.
Hello Again Jamboree Coaches and Athletic Directors

Special Attention to those of you from Oconomowoc, Whitnall, Westosha Central, Stoughton, Beaver Dam, Holmen, and New Berlin West!

I've never heard of snow on May 2nd in Wisconsin and even if I had I'm doubt if there has ever been 18" of it in Rice Lake, 15 inches in Baldwin and Woodville, 14 inches in Spring Valley, 14 inches in Pepin and so on.

However, this is not a weather report but it is a report caused by that incredible, miserable weather.

Due to the snow in Baldwin and Woodville that team has withdrawn suddenly this evening from the Jamboree. That caused me to do some very creative reshuffling of the Saturday schedule for the Jamboree. Thankfully Baldwi-Woodville was scheduled for an even number of games. Five venues creates travel issues so I needed to look closely for the best way to handle the fire-breathing dragon I was facing.

Here are the changes. They do not affect everyone.

They affect Whitnall, Westosha Central, Stoughton, Beaver Dam, Holmen, and New Berlin West.

Beaver Dam will now play three games back-to-back-back on the varsity diamond at DeForest beginning at 9:30 a.m. Their first opponent is still Westosha Central. Beaver Dam's Next game is at 11:15 and is still against DeForest. Here is the change. Beaver Dam's third game is at 1:00 p.m. and is against New Berlin West instead of Baldwin-Woodville. The only change for New Berlin West is the opponent for the 1:00 p.m. game. Their original opponent was going to be Stoughton.

Stoughton will still play at 9:30 on the DeForest JV field against Pacelli. They will then travel to Portage for a 1:00 p.m. battle with Westosha Central. Stoughton will wrap up their day with a 4:30 game against Eau Claire North as originally scheduled.

Whitnall will now also play back-to-back-to back and all games will be at Portage. Whitnall's first game will be at 11:15 as orginally scheduled against Luxemburg-Casco. Whitnall's second game is against Pacelli at 1:00 p.m. and Whitnall's third game is against Holmen at 2:45 in Portage but Holmen may be late getting there as they will be traveling from Poynette to Portage. That shouldn't make much diffference to Holmen or Whitnall because their third games was orginally scheduled for a 4:30 p.m. start. They'll start well before that now.

Holmen will still play its first game at 11:15 at the high school in Poynette but they will now play Oconomowoc instead of Baldwin-Woodville. Holmen will still play back-to-back on the same field and will still play Altoona in that game. Holmen will then have to get on the bus and head for Portage (which is actually on their way back home) and play their game with Whitnall as soon as they can get there. That shouldn't make much diffference to Holmen or Whitnall because their third game against one another was originally scheduled for a 4:30 p.m. start. They'll start well before that now.

Oconomowoc -- you will now play back-to-back in Poynette instead of having a game off between your games.

Westosha Central will still play Beaver Dam in DeForest at 9:30 a.m. They will then travel to Portage for a 1:00 p.m. game with Stoughton and follow that up with a game immediately thereafter at 2:45 against Eau Claire North.

That's about the best I could muster at this late notice.

I've included a picture of what the Master Jamboree Board looks like. Without it this would have been a stress-causing deal. Over the year's we've worked up the Master Board using small Post It Notes that can be moved around easily. Even with the Master Board, the situation I was faced with this evening was a head-shaker.
Bob Tomlinson - Poynette Softball

Oakfield looking for Games on May 6th and May 18th
Doug Mock from Oakfield contacted me earlier today. He's looking for an opponent on Monday May 6th and any teams interested in playing on May 18th. I Just realized that your Fastpitch Chronicle site is back and running. I thank you as it is a treat to read your daily messages. Contact Doug at dmock@oakfield.k12.wi.us

Bob's now has a Twitter account. One of my softball players, Becca, has been teaching me how to use my new Samsung Galaxy S III smart phone. She set up a group for Jamboree umpires, a group of Jamboree coadhes. Michelle from Dodgeland suggested Twitter to get word to people quickly so Becca fired up a Twitter account for me. I guess this would be an invititation to follow me on that social network. @bobfaspich1 is the username I have.

Did you know there is a Right View Pro app? It's a great deal at five bucks. Take a look at it.

Did you know that I-Score is now compatible with wissports statistical stuff? Take a look at that as well.

Did you know that coaches can write up game summaries and submit them to me? Not many do it however. Who loses out on the publicity/notoriety in that deal?

Did you know that there is a State Records Page for softball on the website? Take a look! Send in the records. Did you know that there is a No-Hitter list on the FPC website?

Are you aware of the fact that The Fastpitch Chronicle website at www.fastpitchchronicle.com will be soon switching over to www.fastpitchchronicle.net and will be partnered with wissports.net and the softball information therein? Did you know that there will also be some great fastpitch stuff on the wissports.net side of the softball stuff that you will be able to read. Just sign up with them and you'll get all the fastpitch news and more.

Watch for the announcment in the next few days on that switch-over.

Becca Armstrong threw her 2nd no hitter striking out sixteen, walking four in a 10-0 win over Oregon Tuesday night. Becca has been on a pretty good roll. She has allowed 1 run in her last 8 outings (spaning 46 innings), allowing only 16 hits, 11 walks, and striking out 78 in that span.
Thursday Night
Monroe defeated Monona Grove for the 2nd time this week. Armstrong struck out 13 and allowed only 3 hits while picking up the win. Chandra McGuire hit a two run home run to pace Monroe's offense and Kirstin Vetterli added a run scoring single.

It's late again!
Have a great day!
Keep it Rising! (The temperatures especially)
Bob

The forecast for tomorrow calls for rain throughout the night with a 60% chance of showers until noon followed by a 40% chance in the afteroon!

That was the forecast on weather.com on Friday afternoon while I was sitting in my car watching the softball fields at Poynette High School get wetter and wetter. It was raining hard at 4:30 PM. At 4:45 the water was beginning to stand in puddles. Diamond #5 at the Park in Poynette was underwater and surely out of the picture Saturday. I'd been to Arlington and looked at those right after the venue host, Brent called me and told me they were goners over there. I'd been in Portage at 1:00 PM and they were too we then and were even more so at 4:45.

I went home and sulked and fretted, wondering if I'd done the best thing. Trying to reconfigure a 47 team field on four or maybe five fields instead of the 11 we use is impossible.

At 5:30 it was still raining lightly but I decided to head back to town (I live exactly four miles north of the varsity field at the high school). I drove down to the park first and sure enough, Diamond #5 was under a lot of water in the infield with puddles everyone and a glaze on the entire infield. I drove out by the softball diamond at the park. There was a pretty good sized pool of water near third base, a pool at home plate and a long stretch of really wet infield material between first and second base. While I was out there I noticed that the rain had stopped.

I drove up to the school and looked at the Diamond of Champions Infield (the varsity infield). There was water near second base but only about a gallon or so. There was water near third base but not pooling. I walked out onto the infield and sunk into the creamy, calcium carbonate (finely crushed limestone) near the first base foul line. Over on the JV field I could see a pretty good sized puddle by the normal place near first base. I knew that if it rained throughout the night I'd made the best decision.

I mozied over to Diamond #3 where there was no water standing. It had stopped raining. My wife called me and told me the local weather people had changed the forecast to a high of 67 for today with only a chance of a shower. My first thoughts were: "darn I bet I blew it then!"

It wasn't long and my cell phone rang. It was Jeff from Belmont. He told me that Jane in River Valley and he were going to try to play today and wondered if I would be interested in bringing the Poynette club to Spring Green. As I stood on the infield of Diamond #3 I looked around and told Jeff, "Actually, it's not raining here anymore and apparently the forecast has changed. I would have four playable fields by about 10 AM." So, River Valley and Belmont said they'd come to Poynette and play a three-team round robin. I told him I'd call him back after I made a couple of calls to secure tow umpires and make sure I had a team yet that could play. Then I got an e-mail on cell phone about two minutes later from Tom Lampe of Westosha Central. They were up in Lake Delton holed up in their motel rooms. He said, "We're here tonight and tomorrow night and I know your fields will be playable if it doesn't rain anymore." So they were in. Union Grove was also staying in hotel rooms as was Wauwatosa East as both of those coaches either called me, sent me a text message or an e-mail telling me early on telling they were still going to be in the area. Jenn From Columbus told me her team would be in Then I called DeForest as they are one of the host venues that we had lost. Lori had to do some creative calling to get permisison to come up but she was successful. I would have offered the same chance to our other host venue Portage but knew that today was their prom and it would not be possible to get them here due to that for later games. Luxemburg-Casco had rooms for the night just outside Arlington so I knew they'd want to play. I called Poynette's other "home team" in Thorp but they'd dispersed and chose to stay in the north. I called Rice Lake as I knew they had rooms for the night. They jumped in and headed for here.

So we had 12 teams and played 13 games. I'd have loved to pulled off a miracle and been able to get every team that had entered the Jamboree into the action but it just wasn't going to happen. A couple of years ago I tried to hold off on cancelling and people were chewing on both my ears at the same time. I cancelled that time too and we still played some games the next day on our four fields in town.

In the future I will hold off until the last possible minute before I cancel the Jamboree.

We'll be sending out school contracts for the 2014 Jamboree within the next couple of weeks. Be looking for them if you are at a school that was entered at one time or another this year.

If there are any teams that want to play some games this Friday and Saturday in Poynette and Arlington just get in touch with me. We have two that are willing to play. We can have another mini-event here.

Thanks to information supplied by Gale Grahn of Plymouth, I have added former Campbellsport Head Softball Coach Rick Simpson to the 100 wins list on the Coaches Honor Roll. Rick retired from the Campbellsport helm after the 2012 season.

I saw a pretty impressive freshman softball player today. Westosha Central freshman cather Kayla Konwent was tremendous behind the plate and at the plate. She hit two home runs against Oconomowoc and had another single in there too. Against Poynette she had two hits including a blast that was the longest ball I've ever seen hit at Poynette's Diamond of Champions field. She has a fantastic arm, blocks balls, handles pitches and handles a bat. She hit a fourth home run on the day when she hit a towering shot against Rice Lake. She has six homers on the year. There has to be an asterisk placed after her hitting feat though. Westosha was providing a Dudley Thunder Heat ball for the ball that they were required to provide today. Thunder Heats travel much faster and much farther than a Dudley SB12LND FP ball. Don't get me wrong, I know that three of those homers today would have been out of the yard if they had been hit with a Dudley 12LND FP ball, just not as far and I'm not sure the liner that cleared the fence in left vs Oconomowoc would have made it out. She's a big time talent already being watched closely by several Big 10 teams. Wisconsin, if you are reading this, jump on the band wagon. The kid is the real deal!

Have a great Sunday.
Keep it Rising!
bob