While the recent weather has left many Fairfield students bundled up and stuck inside, there are at least two people sweating the effects of Mother Nature’s wrath.
Paul Cantrell, assistant director of recreation and Allen Gibson, associate director of athletics in charge of facilities, have had to deal with a number of setbacks in the past few weeks due to the extended winter weather. The conditions have created a number of delays regarding the start of the spring athletic and intramural schedules.
“This spring, weather has lasted longer and we’ve had real wet and cold weather,” said Cantrell. “It has put us about a week and a half behind schedule.”
The intramural softball program has especially suffered due to the weather, as fields were deemed unplayable up until Tuesday. Due to the poor conditions and the larger number of teams this year, Cantrell has been forced to make many changes, including shortening the length of the season as well as implementing a new league setup.
Each league will now be broken into multiple pools consisting of four or five teams, with the top two teams advancing to a single elimination championship round tournament.
If weather permits, the bottom two or three teams will participate in a single elimination cancellation round.
“The cancellation round would just be an opportunity to enjoy the warm weather and play softball,” said Cantrell. “But we may lose this due to the weather. While there are not as many games as students played in the pas, I’m confident we can get both [tournaments] done.”
Gibson also has been working hard to prepare the university’s athletic fields for play, as the varsity baseball and softball teams have been especially hindered by the weather.
Both teams have had to postpone their first few home games and have been forced to remain longer than expected in the athletic center for practice.
“[Weather] has cancelled four of our games this year and we haven’t been able to practice on our field yet,” said softball player Molly Harris ’06. “We’ve been stuck inside more and there’s only so much you can do inside.”
Gibson and his crew remain confident that they can get the fields ready by the end of the week, as the baseball team gets set to play St. Peter’s at home on Saturday, while softball hosts Dartmouth on Sunday.
“The ground teams have been working very diligently to get [the fields] open and we’re looking to have things up and running by this weekend,” said Gibson.
While both Cantrell and Gibson hope to see the weather improve over the next few weeks, both will keep their fingers crossed since they never know what surprise Mother Nature may have in store for them in the near future.
“The simple reality is, we live in a northern climate,” said Cantrell. “We’re at the mercy of the weather conditions.”
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