My kids teams (3) have rescheduled many games. I have 6 teams under me and Saturday (after the AM) looks like a cluster from a scheduling perspective. I have been coaching for 16 years and frankly I see this trend getting worse (weather). Anyone else or am I just bitching?
Nope it sucks. Although last Spring was great in NE Ohio. I dont think we had any weather related cancellations for games or even practices.
Season definitely seem to be shifting later in the Midwest. Teams are going to need to play until July to get all the makeups in after this weekend gets snowed/rained out
Volkl, CSA practice/play on grass? We started outdoors I think on March 18th, not a single practice cancelled. only game cancelled was Monday a few weeks ago after the Sunday snowstorm but games could have easily been played if someone took the time to check fields out at 3 pm. One of reasons we are staying put.
Same for me last Spring in the Southeast. Honestly I think it's a culmination of a few different things that causing this to happen. Soccer has become popular enough that cities have funded nicer parks, which means the grass for ULittles is as nice as the nicest fields I ever played on when I was in high school. But unfortunately this has caused two side effects. The field managers are hyper sensitive about playing on wet fields because of all the money the city spent on the parks. Also, they realized they get a large chunk of money at the end of the season if there's a pay tournament, which is more likely to happen if the fields are pristine. So the end result is that at the slightest bit of rain, everything is shut down tighter than a pro stadium. I remember playing in rain, cold, everything unless there was lightning. And that's the way it should be. So not sure how to fix it, but it seems to me to be hurting kids' training.
Here in VA we've had 2 games rescheduled and 3 practices rained out. It just poured again today, so crossing my fingers they don't cancel games again tomorrow. There are a few turf fields where we play, but usually those go to older age groups first and then trickle down if available. I don't like the rare times we have to play on turf though, because we never practice on it.
Eclipse got its Friday night and early Saturday games in at their tournament. Looks unlikely they will get many more in this weekend.
We were slated to play MN games this weekend in Rockford. Guess who now gets to travel to MN to make up those games I guess it's better then most other states in the Midwest - I just don't know where we'll find the time to fit in these games? One more weekend of bad weather and we'll be playing games during the week!
We have an indoor facility in West Chicago. For example we just got a notice that our practice for today was moved inside. It's one field but they do their best to stick with the normal practice routine.
The problem is real. My rec teams have missed a ton of practice to the point that I only cancel based on temps - fields (IMO) are going to get destroyed no matter what - so have at it. As I mentioned, my daughters club has an indoor facility but that typically does not facility all 3-4 practice is a week if the weather is consistently bad. I think for my rec teams - we may look at an indoor solution with another club.
My anti-turf purism was finally vanquished once many clubs here in Northern VA built turf fields and game cancellations became much less common.
My son's club is in the process of moving two-thirds of its tournament this weekend to various high school turf fields in our area after the owners/managers of the two grass-field sites we usually use shut their fields down because of the ongoing mess (our tournaments are usually scattered over three multifield locations, one turf and two grass). I'm well past my anti-turf purist days, and definitely not liking spring (or in the Midwest, mud season) these days.
With the newer turf fields becoming more and more real grass like, the anti-turf crowd has to be shrinking. Although our old club practiced indoors on the 80's style Astrodome Turf which is both a head injury and torn knee waiting to happen. But their priorities were player safety first and development 2nd. Both of which were cute things to say during parent meetings but neither true.
Yeah, newer turf fields allow for better soccer than they used to. And they're more forgiving of slide tackles.
Ugh, I remember those days. Sorry. I really hated that. When my son first started playing, I had a job where I worked every other weekend. It seemed like it always rained on my weekend off!
Got both our MRL games in this weekend at Sportscore! Beautiful day for games! WAZE gave me the farmland country roads all the way there an back - so a great drive as well. Got some fantastic fly overs from a few WWII Bombers as well.
6 games so far - only 3 outside practices - none on our own practice fields. At this point I cannot wait for Spring to be done. Bring on better weather, bon fires, camping and boating!