All this precipitation results in frustration

Updated: May 26, 2011 8:06PM

Homewood-Flossmoor athletic director Joe Skowronski is a pretty multilayered guy these days, what with hosting Class 4A baseball and softball regionals, managing the affairs of a soccer sectional finalist and kids at both boys state tennis and boys state track and field.

He’s fine with all that. When it comes to fashion, though, he’d rather take a pass.

“I had to wear four layers (Wednesday) at the soccer game,” Skowronski said. “You know, the 25th of May and you’re wearing your winter coat? I mean, come on.”

It’s been crazy, to be sure. And it could get crazier if this blasted spring weather doesn’t settle down.

Think high seeds declared regional or sectional champions. A coin flip deciding a supersectional winner. It could happen.

The IHSA doesn’t wait forever to decide its state tournaments, In the baseball and softball terms and conditions it states that if a regional or sectional softball title game cannot be completed before the scheduled start of the next round, the highest-seeded team will be declared the champion. If a supersectional game cannot be completed before the scheduled start of the state semifinal contest, a coin flip will determine which team advances.

IHSA executive director Marty Hickman said he doesn’t recall a coin flip ever taking place to decide an IHSA event. Skowronski remembers not too many years ago a regional champion being decided by a seed. I distinctly remember some years back two teams playing a softball supersectional the morning of the quarterfinals, with the winner driving directly to state.

The forecast for the coming week looks all right enough that we shouldn’t see any of those scenarios. And we’ve been lucky compared to the poor souls down south who have had so many lives taken or changed forever by a seemingly endless chain of tornadoes.

But man. What a day. What a week. What a spring.

“It’s been a total nightmare, a total circus,” Tinley Park athletic director Mike Mongan said.

Like Skowronski, Mongan is hosting regionals for softball and baseball. Both were washed out Thursday, along with just about every other game throughout the state. Rescheduling wasn’t as easy as, same time, same station tomorrow.

“We have to have one game at 2 p.m. because Illiana Christian has prom and Lemont has graduation,” Mongan said. “We’re in the same boat. Our soccer team is in the sectional semi. We were scheduled to play (Wednesday) at 4:30, but we had graduation so they switched the game to 7 o’clock. So then we get out there and play part of the first half and then (because of lightning) he have to finish it (Thursday).

“Proms, graduations, you’re going to run into all of that. You just try to do the best you can.”

The field at Coal City was under so much water Thursday that the two Class 2A sectional softball games involving Beecher and Lemont had to be postponed until Saturday. The sectional title won’t be decided until Monday. The Seneca Supersectional was pushed from Monday to Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Class 3A Bremen baseball regional is to have one game played at 4:30 p.m. today between the host Braves and Morris, while at the same time Oak Forest and Rich East will play their semi at Memorial Park’s Howie Minas Field in Midlothian.

And it’s not just baseball and softball that have suffered this postseason. Soccer sectionals have been stopped by lightning and pushed to the next day. The start of state tennis Thursday was delayed by three hours. And although boys state track and field wasn’t delayed, it was just a miserable day Thursday.

“It literally rained every minute I was there from 11 to 2,” Hickman said. “But there wasn’t any lightning or thunder so we were able to run it.

“Several people said, ‘Well, the kids ought to be used to this, it’s all we’ve had all spring.’ It was a little bit funny, but there was truth to it.”

Mongan estimated that this spring he has had to reschedule in excess of 20 events.

“We actually had to cancel some track meets, which never happens,” he said. “But because of the severity of the rain and the lightning, we had to. Mother Nature has not been good to us this spring. I guess it’s the nature of the beast.”

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