WOODBURY — April showers bring May flowers, but not this year.
For Nonnewaug spring sports teams, many of their games have either been rescheduled or canceled due to rain.
This change in schedule has affected all Nonnewaug sports teams. Chiefs baseball coach Kyle Brennan believes that the rain has affected meaningful practices.
“We also miss valuable practice time,” says Brennan. “You don’t get as much out of a gym practice as you do with an outdoor practice. We just try to make indoor practices short, sweet and to the point,” says Brennan. “We try to hit, try to work on baserunning, because defensively there is only so much you can do inside.”
Like Brennan, sophomore baseball player Cam Jones feels that the gym practices hold back the team.
“I think it [the rain] limits us a lot because it makes us have to practice inside and with a bunch of other teams that are competing for a spot in the gym,” says Jones. “It makes the season more stressful. Because of the rain we have a lot less time to work on things we need to work on, and we have a lot of games. But we still gotta go there and make sure that we are getting everything done that we need to. It’s like it’s still like the same amount of work you need to get done, but half the time.”
Like the Chiefs baseball team, Nonnewaug softball also struggles with rainy days. Nonnewaug freshman Lila Farrelly believes that the team faces challenges when practices are canceled.
“We’ve had a couple of practices canceled because of the rain,” says Farrelly, “and we also had a couple games canceled because of it. So I feel like the rain affects our team because we’re not getting as much practicing time.”
These canceled games are because of the playing field conditions for baseball and softball.
“Unlike other sports that may become inconvenient with the rain but you can still play,” says Brennan. “You cannot play baseball and softball after a lot of rain because the dirt becomes unplayable. Baseball gets double affected because sometimes you end up having to play multiple games in consecutive days, which makes it difficult to manage your pitching staff in those situations.”
Unlike these sports, Lakeview lacrosse practices rarely get canceled.
“It’s really muddy, and it affects things like ball throwing and how you pick the ball up and your movement and people are sliding a lot and slipping,” says Nonnewaug junior lacrosse player Finn Farrelly. “We haven’t canceled practice this year with all the rain. I even had to blow dry my cleats. They were just covered in water; water was falling out of them and I had to let them sit for a day.”
These interrupted schedules sometimes cause problems in players routines.
“Baseball is a sport of repetition,” says Brennan. “So whenever your routine gets interrupted, it makes it difficult to keep up momentum.”
