Rain postponements mire state’s student-athletes

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As rain fell in Dover-Foxcroft on Saturday morning, about 50 head and assistant coaches gathered in a storage shed at Foxcroft Academy to determine the fate of the Class C state track and field championships.

The verdict?

Another wet weekend, another track and field postponement.

Despite all but two of the teams involved showing up for the meet, which already had been postponed from June 3 because of rain, it again was decided to call things off for another day with better weather.

Student-athletes from about 40 schools were to compete.

The Class C track meet was one of many postponements around the state as rain affected high school sports for the second weekend in a row.

Eastern Maine baseball and softball semifinal playoff games were postponed to Monday, and the state team tennis finals were played indoors.

Although the new date for the Class C meet has yet to be decided, coaches are pushing for 4 p.m. Tuesday rather than trying for a third Saturday in a row.

“We are begging the MPA [Maine Principals’ Association] to let us do it then,” said coach Bruce Pratt of John Bapst Memorial High School of Bangor, whose Crusaders are trying for their fifth straight girls championship, which would match Winthrop’s 1995-99 run.

“We really feel that the championships will be diluted if we do it next weekend,” he added. “A lot of kids go on post-graduation trips or have job commitments. And we have good weather projected for Tuesday.”

The state Junior Olympics meet is scheduled for Saturday in Augusta, which also could pull student-athletes away from high school state competitions.

Class C state track and field meet director Mary Cady said the competition is indeed tentatively scheduled for 4 p.m. Tuesday. The MPA track and field committee will meet Monday morning to make a final decision.

“I think after [Tuesday] the weather is going to go bad and we’re losing kids,” Cady said. “Maybe some of the kids who couldn’t come [Saturday] can come back today.”

Standing water at the Foxcroft Academy complex and a threat of strong storms were the reasons for sending the teams home from Saturday’s meet.

The first events were to start at 10 a.m. It was obvious early that the pole vault would not be contested, Cady said.

The decision to postpone the entire meet was made at around 9 a.m. Most of the teams arrived by 8:45 a.m., Pratt said, and his squad left the Foxcroft facility at about 9:30.

The conditions were bad, Pratt said.

“There was standing water in a lot of areas on the track,” he said. “I didn’t inspect the throwing areas myself, but I took [official] Don Berry’s word for it, [that they] were wet and covered with water. … They were quite worried about [the storms].”

The meet wasn’t called off early enough to get the word out before teams left for Dover-Foxcroft because officials initially had hoped the rain would remain light. But conditions worsened later in the morning.

“It was a hard rain. It wasn’t a slower rain like we had at MDI,” Cady said, referring to the June 3 Class B state meet which was held in rain at Mount Desert Island High School. “After everybody left, the wind picked up and it blew the tent over at the finish line. It wouldn’t have been safe for the kids, and that’s your primary concern.”

Extra trips, extra money

Pratt said that during the meeting no coaches expressed annoyance in having to travel for the second weekend in a row only to have a meet postponed. The June 3 meet was to be held at Morse High School in Bath.

There was frustration, however, that the decision wasn’t made late last week, considering the weather forecast called for rain all day Saturday.

“The apparatus for making the decision overall could probably in today’s day and age be improved,” Pratt said. “I think the MPA might have had a way to predict this was going to happen. We should have made this call on Thursday.”

And there was some worry, he added, about how schools from as far as Kittery and Fort Kent would find the money for a third bus trip.

Even for John Bapst, which has a relatively short ride to Dover-Foxcroft, the transportation costs are getting out of hand.

Pratt said he and John Bapst athletic director Mike Thomas determined that they will have spent more than $1,700 in buses for one meet. One southern Maine coach, Pratt said, was told there might not be enough money for his team to take a bus and the student-athletes might have to carpool.

“It’s very expensive,” Pratt said. “The Traip [Academy in Kittery] coach said he wasn’t sure he could get a bus for Tuesday, that his kids might have to come up in some kind of a carpool. He was just told there was no more money in the till.”

Paul Michaud, the athletic director at Fort Kent and a member of the MPA’s track and field committee, said his school’s team left on the 193-mile trip to Dover-Foxcroft at 5 a.m. Michaud himself left a little later, but when he got to a rainy Millinocket he called MPA assistant executive director Larry LaBrie.

LaBrie told Michaud the meet was about to be called off. Michaud got in touch with his team when the Warriors were about 15 miles from Dover-Foxcroft and told them to turn around.

“We made a long ride for nothing,” Michaud said. “Last time I put them up in Bath overnight. This time we left in the morning. But it’s still going to be costly in terms of transportation.”

He didn’t know the exact cost of the bus trip from Fort Kent to Dover-Foxcroft, but Michaud said it’s likely that the school district will support sending the team.

“The district has been very supportive in terms of sending us to these functions,” he said. “They’ve always come through in the past and I’m assuming they will again. … We’re used to traveling everywhere. We just get on the bus and travel.”

Michaud made it only to Millinocket, but that will end up costing the MPA money. The association reimburses costs for committee members who travel to events such as state meets.

“I logged 600 miles, today I put on another 300. If I go Tuesday that’s another 400, so there’s a lot of mileage there,” he said. “It’s costly all around.”

Both the track and field teams from Yarmouth and the Limestone-Maine School of Science and Mathematics already had notified Cady that they would not attend Saturday’s Class C track and field meet.

Cady said both squads would be allowed to participate Tuesday.

The coaches also argued that the original seeds from the June 3 meet be restored. The meet was reseeded for this Saturday.

Cady is confident she will be able to line up officials for Tuesday. Pratt said the Class C coaches volunteered to help officiate events.

The Class A meet at Bowdoin College in Brunswick was held, as the heavy showers held off until the meet was over.

The Scarborough girls and Lewiston boys won team titles.

Baseball, softball plagued

Maine’s baseball and softball teams are hoping the weather cooperates Monday. Eastern Maine baseball and softball finals are scheduled to start in Bangor and Brewer, respectively, on Tuesday.

Baseball coach Dan Kane of George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill has seen some rainy weeks in his 18 years as the top-ranked Eagles coach. But he has never been through anything like this in the postseason.

“We’ve had some bad regular-season weeks,” he said. “But as far as playoffs, this is as bad as I’ve ever seen it.”

No. 1 GSA and No. 9 Central High School of Corinth got into an unusual situation Wednesday when they started their quarterfinal game in Blue Hill.

Central had a 3-2 lead in the third inning when the rain picked up and the umpires deemed the infield too slippery. The Red Devils went home and returned the next day only to lose 10-0 in six innings.

GSA’s pitching rotation wasn’t hurt much, but things could get complicated for many teams playing back-to-back games Monday and Tuesday.

The Eagles will play No. 5 Searsport at 3 p.m.

“Certainly if we’re fortunate enough to move on, it will make it tougher that way,” Kane said. “My coaching staff will sit down and talk with the pitchers involved and see what’s going to be the best decision.”

The Bangor Christian School softball team is continuing a recent trend for local teams that find themselves swamped out of their own fields.

The Patriots were planning to play their semifinal against Lee at Hampden Academy on Saturday afternoon. Hampden’s Weatherbee Complex has an artificial-turf field.

In past years, fall field hockey games have been played on the artificial turf at Husson College in Bangor. Last fall, a University of Maine soccer game was moved to Hampden because of impending rain.

The BC softball team, ranked No. 1 in Eastern Maine Class D, played in Hampden on Friday and recorded an 18-0 win over No. 9 Jonesport-Beals High School. Later Friday afternoon, Belfast and MDI played an EM Class B quarterfinal there.

Eric Conway, Bangor Christian’s athletic director, said Hampden charged teams $100 to play softball there.

“I’d use $100 worth of Speedy Dry anyway,” Conway said. “They’ve been very cooperative to area schools.”

Bangor Christian is to face No. 5 Lee today at 4 p.m. The Patriots will try to use their own field, but may end up at Hampden again.

Softball pitchers are used to playing back-to-back games – there are no pitching limitations for softball as there are in baseball – but Conway said the postponements have thrown off BC’s offense a bit.

“I think the layoff did hurt their batting a little bit because it took them an inning or so to get into the swing of things,” he said of Friday’s quarterfinal game. “But you try to do other things in the gym. It did affect them, but not too bad.”

The 11th-seeded Madawaska High School baseball team has been on the road all week for the Eastern Maine Class C playoffs. But the weather hadn’t really affected the team until Saturday.

The Owls, who are just happy to have qualified for the postseason after some player suspensions earlier this year, will play No. 2 Houlton High School at 3 p.m. Monday.

“They’ve adjusted quite well [to the weather],” coach Vince Vanier said. “We were hoping just to get into the playoffs. Once we got in, we figured we might be able to win a few games.”