KVAC curtails skeds, PVC declines

While at least one conference in Maine has decided to reduce its spring sports schedule because of wet (and in many cases snowy) athletic fields, the Penobscot Valley Conference will keep its schedule in place.

Athletic directors from the 30 PVC schools who attended a regular monthly meeting in Bangor Thursday decided to keep the baseball and softball schedule at 16 games, even if that means teams won’t play outside of a gymnasium until the first pitch of the regular season.

“Our schedules will stay intact. We’re not changing anything,” said Bangor High athletic director Steve Vanidestine, who attended the meeting at the United Technologies Center. “We’ll reschedule on the regular play dates if we have to.”

Although high school teams can play their first game after 3 p.m. Friday, Bangor, for example, doesn’t open its regular season until April 21. The last countable game date is May 25, with May 26 reserved as a rain date.

Early-season games that cannot be played because of wet fields will be handled like any other postponed game during the season: the schools will reschedule.

The Class A schools of the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference voted in their monthly athletic directors’ meeting Wednesday to cut the schedule from 16 games to 12. Those schools were supposed to start April 16 but will now begin April 25.

Class B KVAC schools will keep to the 16-game schedule, starting April 23 instead of April 18, and reschedule April 18 and 20 games to dates in May. Fields at those schools, which are primarily closer to the coast, are in better shape than fields at inland schools.

There were a number of factors that went into the Class A KVAC schools’ decision, Skowhegan athletic director Jon Christopher said.

. Field conditions. Fields at Leavitt of Turner and Oxford Hills in South Paris are still covered in three feet of snow. Mt. Blue of Farmington’s fields are buried under two feet. Even Morse in Bath has 14 inches on its fields.

. Ability to clear snow and dry fields. Some schools play on their town recreation department’s fields, which haven’t been cleared yet. And if they are clear, the fields are water-logged. Skowhegan’s softball field is mostly clear, but is “really wet,” Christopher said.

. An uneven number of schools in the conference. With 13 Class A teams in the KVAC, it’s hard to juggle schedules.

To get down to 12 games, the schools will drop their first four games, which were against opponents whom they would have played twice in the season.

Christopher said he voted to keep the 16-game schedule, but understands the trouble facing other schools.

“With the fields as bad as they are and the uneven number of teams, there were a lot of reasons to do this,” he said.

The 13 schools will resubmit updated schedules to the Maine Principals Association, and their Heal Points will be calculated out of 12 games instead of 16.