Eric’s baseball team held practice on consecutive days, both amid the worst baseball weather you can imagine.
When we left the house Friday afternoon there were a few drops coming down, but the sun was shining, so we figured it would pass quickly.
Wrong.
The drops persisted steadily, by the time we parked and walked the path to the diamond, a group of guys who had been shooting hoops were on their way out of the park, apparently having had their fill of guessing if it would clear up or not. Off in the distance, a line of kids was taking grounders, so Eric and I quickly made our way over to join them. I was about to start hitting to the kids when a flash went off behind us. The first thing I thought of was that someone was taking our picture, but I guess because we were so close to it, the thunder clapped before I had a chance to think otherwise. So there I am, aluminum bat in hand (yes, the handle is rubber, but is that enough insulation?), and the coach directs us to find shelter under a canopy of trees.
Practice over, and now it’s really dumping.
An ominous start? I don’t think so.
The coach finagled a gym for Saturday practice and we all agreed to see him there (the next day) at 3pm. I don’t know much about him personally, but the way he conducts practice shows that he’s been involved in youth sports for a while. He’s stern, but very fair, and I will do well to pick up a couple of pointers for my own practices.
In fact, I already did.
I had a practice for my girls team Saturday morning, even though I was full-on ready to scrub it at 10am. Then I got a call from one of the kid’s mom asking if we were still on. I looked outside and (optimistic me) figured “what the hell” – we’re on for 11am.
So what if we only had 6 girls, I had 3 that really needed the work. We have a ways to go, it’s going to be a challenge getting the whole team in sync. In reality we probably won’t get there 100%, I can’t see someone like Natalie or Kelsey firing a ball to one of the new players for an out on the bases. It may happen, but not consistently.
We’ll wait and see if we get a break with the weather, what my players really need is one on one work with their parents – and a scrimmage so that when we start playing in less than a month they won’t be shocked by the experience.