Vikes’ softball takes called third strike> Low interest dooms East Grand girls program

With only 36 girls in the high school, East Grand this week opted not to field a softball team for the third straight year.

The Danforth-based school had five or six girls sign up for the team when school officials decided to pull the plug.

“Two years ago, this happened, and last year we didn’t even bother to field a team because there wasn’t enough interest,” East Grand athletic director Bruce Carter said. “Most of the athletes were seniors. They’re looking forward to graduation and just had other things to do.”

The Maine Principals’ Association does allow high schools with fewer than 40 girls to add eighth-graders to the varsity roster if necessary to field a full team, MPA Assistant Executive Director Larry LaBrie said.

“We just didn’t feel right as administrators pulling up that many eighth-graders,” Carter said. “We probably could’ve but we decided not to. We didn’t want to rob the middle school program.”

East Grand girls will be allowed to go out for the baseball team, which could probably use the extra bodies. The Vikings baseball team had 12 boys on the roster as of Friday.

“The last two years [junior and starting second baseman] Megan Amero has played,” Carter siad. “The option’s there for any of them that want to, but it’s a whole different game.”

East Grand joins Greenville on the sidelines of Eastern Maine Class D softball and leaves just 12 teams in the playoff chase. Central Aroostook of Mars Hill dropped its baseball team earlier this spring but had enough girls for softball.

With 12 teams playing for a postseason seed, the top two seeds will have quarterfinal byes while No. 3 and No. 4 would play first-round hosts to No. 6 and No. 5, respectively.

Soggy weather Friday further delayed the unofficial start for eastern and northern Maine baseball and softball.

Twenty softball and baseball games were scheduled but rain postponed each, and from the looks of the mess outside athletic directors’ windows, the number of rescheduled games could top those from last spring.

“I thought last spring was bad but it looks like this one is going to be its match,” Lee Academy athletic director Gary Osgood said.

The Pandas’ terrain remains snow-covered, forcing Osgood to juggle the schedule to play more away games early in the season.

Nokomis of Newport gave up waiting for the snow to melt on its field and shoveled it off earlier this week, AD Julie Richard said. Now the Warriors just have to wait for the drainage pipes to do the job.

An informal poll revealed Hancock County to be just about the only oasis of dry fields.

Mount Desert Island’s AD Bunky Dow reported his baseball team played scrimmages Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, and practiced outside Wednesday and Thursday. Ellsworth and Bucksport officials declare the fields will be ready to go when the weather breaks.

But farther down the coast, Camden-Rockport AD Dave Cook worried about the ducks on the Windjammers’ turf. Scheduled to play host to Belfast Friday, Cook said the baseball and softball teams will play Tuesday at Camden-Rockport, hopefully.

Should the Camden fields not be dry, the 1 p.m. games will be played at Belfast.

The lesson being – don’t write down those schedules in ink. And wear your boots.