COLUMN: Give us a break

I sometimes get the feeling Ma Nature is not a big fan of springs sports, the kind played in the great Montana outdoors.

She’s a fickle date, this Nature lady. Never know what she’s going to do.

Usually, if you don’t like what she’s doing, you can simply wait five minutes and she’ll change, so they say.

But she also has an insidious side.

And when that part of the weather personality shows up, she can often plan on staying awhile and unleashing the Montana version of Monsoon season. Multiple personality disorder from the sky.

Rain, rain, go away, come again after graduation day?

This past week was a not so untypical week weather-wise for a Montana April. And sports teams across the area, even the whole massive state, paid the price.

Who thought it would be “nice” to fool Mother Nature?

The outdoor sporting events took a beating last week. Only a pair of softball games by the red-hot Thompson Falls-Noxon softball team and a golf tournament in which T Falls was entered (Hamilton), found a chink in MN’s armor long enough to complete the games or match at hand.

For the record, the softball players beat Plains Tuesday and then upended Sandpoint, Idaho this past Friday, boosting their early season record to 4-0. The golfers got in a full round in Hamilton Thursday, but played the last four holes in a steady rain.

Can we conclude golfers and softball players are tougher than tracksters? Probably not, but that is part of the wicked side of Mother Nature.

And across the state, match after match, meet after meet, game after game were being rained out.

The Noxon-T Falls baseball team, fresh off the first win in the program’s brief history, could not carry that momentum forward due to soggy grounds in St. Ignatius. That one moved to the “reschedule” column.

The big track meet in Bigfork, scheduled for Saturday, got the “not so fast” from Nature too.

It would have been the first meet of the season for the Hot Springs track team, a team poised to have a good year based on returning talent. But MN was having none of it.

St. Regis and Alberton were making plans to head to Hamilton for a Saturday track event. Mother Nature had other plans. Rain.

This week that we are now in, according to one of the many weather apps on one of my three weather-app loaded “devices” calls for Tuesday (April 9) to be the highest chance of rain, while the rest of the week looks mostly dry with temps in the low and mid 50s.

Yeah, right.

The week after this one has a chance of rain most every day.

What’s the solution?

Pretty sure retractable domes are not in the budget for any of the local schools, much less any statewide.

Equipping the players with umbrellas is likely not practical.

The only defense that makes sense would be to give baseball and softball catchers SCUBA masks and replace their chest protectors with life vests.

Imagine a catcher chasing a foul pop up with swim flippers on.

Hey, the water is rusting my brain.

Soon all this water will translate into green grass and Montana wildflowers...we hope.

And pretty much all Montanans agree more snow is needed in the high mountains, lest the fish in our rivers sprout little legs and learn to walk.

How about just every other day being “nice”? Give the Activities Directors who are involved in the rescheduling challenges a break.

Give the fans fresh, outdoor air to breathe, sunshine on the shoulders, etc.

Come on Ma, give us a break!