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
Tag(s): Bulletins
