May 20, 2006 By Jim Downey 5 min read

The child’s poem about dreary days is ever-present this week, especially in the offices of the WPIAL as Mother Nature tries to remedy a four-month rain shortage in less than a week that has caused a scheduling nightmare for playoff-bound baseball and softball teams. At least all of the area’s softball teams have played, with Waynesburg Central, Belle Vernon and Beth-Center along with West Greene advancing to the quarterfinals.

That’s not the case for the five local baseball teams. Southmoreland is on the docket to play a preliminary round game today, but more rain is scheduled to fall. Connellsville, Geibel Catholic, Carmichaels and California are on hold until Monday, but games are starting to stack up.

(If it needs to rain so consistently, can’t it at least be 80 degrees? Anyone else agree?)

The WPIAL obviously didn’t consult the schedules of a couple of its districts or it could have suspected something like this would happen because Kennywood Day for Connellsville and Frazier was last Monday with Hempfield’s on Thursday. Any veteran observer knows the most miserable weather imaginable falls on these days of fun away from school!

Stacking games puts a kink in things with innings restrictions on pitchers. To its credit, the WPIAL tries to put together a schedule so a team’s ace can throw twice in as many games. With dry skies in the forecast next week, managers and coaches now have to ponder long and hard on a pitching rotation because, no matter how simplistic it sounds, a team can’t be playing a second game if it doesn’t win the first.

Lucky for me, though, I was scheduled to cover the only sporting event in the spring schedule that, like the post office, perseveres through all types of weather, save lightning. Yes, the district’s Class AAA and AA track and field meets went on as scheduled, Tuesday at South Side Beaver High School and Thursday at Baldwin.

The bigger schools were a bit more fortunate with only one hard shower and the most the sun has appeared in the week. The smaller schools had no such luck, with the rain constant until the 1,600 relay, the day’s final event on the track, when the sun shone brightly to prove it still existed up in the sky.

A few hardy souls stuck it out to watch sons, daughters, friends and classmates, but the athletes, whether medallists or not, were the real stalwarts.

If Donald Trump’s personal assistant would have set up the schedule Brownsville’s America Cardine had while winning four medals Tuesday, the real estate magnate would have uttered those famous words, “You’re fired!”

It’s hard to describe just how many events the Lady Falcon junior managed to cram into 10 minutes of action. She was rather popular because her name was called out on the PA system several times, requesting her presence at an event or the awards stand.

Those in the long and triple jumps brought a little bit of Hookstown home with them because the sand in the pits stuck like Velcro to legs, arms and uniforms, and the rain was hard enough to cement the particles to skin and cloth but not hard enough to wash it away.

I really felt for the boys and girls in the Class AA 3,200. It really poured during the 3,200 into the 200, but at least the sprinters were only in the deluge for 25 seconds or so. Those poor, often small of stature athletes, were in it for the long haul, eight laps around the track. Many of them looked like drowned rodents by the completion of their bid for a medal.

Connellsville’s Rodney Richter came away from the week with the best attitude to a finish an athlete could have. The freshman didn’t have a great throw in his flight of the discus, but it was good enough to make the finals. Richter finally put a decent throw together of 152 feet, 10 inches, but he fell a mere two inches short of extending his season.

If he held any lingering bitterness or anger about his near miss in his first district final, he didn’t show any as he waited for his sixth-place medal. Richter obviously wanted to qualify for the state meet, but calmly said he has three more years to do so and, by his demeanor, expects to do so.

Again, as I have said before, maybe those with the big contracts can take a cue from a high school freshman by keeping things in their proper perspective.

If history is any indicator, the Memorial Day weekend will hold one of two weather patterns as the state’s finest track and field athletes gather at Shippensburg University on Friday and Saturday. The range can go from what we’ve experienced the past few days to sweltering temperatures, sometimes within a few hours on the same day. If I had a vote, I’m going with the sweltering temperatures. My rain poncho needs a break to dry out.

Jim Downey is a Herald-Standard sports writer.