Rain Dampens Spring Sports Schedules

Greater-than-average rainfall through April, added to greater-than-normal snowfall in March, has created a mess for local ball fields, forcing high school teams and youth sports clubs to cancel and reschedule games for the past few weeks.

The water-soaked fields have mud in the best areas and pools of water or exceptionally squishy areas in the worst. Threats of lightning from storms have also prevented children from playing games.

, for example, have spent the past month juggling baseball game times to avoid the storms, and the district has had to cancel some tennis, soccer and lacrosse games because of the weather.

Tom Willette, co-athletic director for the district, said this is the worst spring weather he's seen in his 11 years on the job.

“The hard part is trying to make up the dates,” Willette said. “It's frustrating for the kids and the parents, though they do understand. Sometimes we even have to switch to playing at a different location at the last minute, and that's hard on families. We had to reschedule one game three different times.”

Rachel Kulik with the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office Detroit/Pontiac in White Lake said there was almost one-third more precipitation in March and April of this year than in 2010, and almost 50 percent more rain than average.

Since March 1, the southeast Michigan area has had about 9.2 inches of rain, Kulik said, which is about 3.6 inches more than the same time last year. The average rainfall for March 1-May 1 is about 5 inches, she said.

According to Willette, there have been many rescheduled Plymouth-Canton baseball games, and if a field is found available to play on, the varsity games take priority.

Willette said recently a home game had to be switched to the visitor's field in Novi at the last minute, meaning family members planning to attend the game were out of luck. “It has been an inconvenience,” Willette said. “Last year the spring was great. We had some rain, but not like this.”

The has been forced to cancel most of its youth soccer games and practices during the past three weeks because the field it uses at in Canton has been, for the most part, underwater.

“Hulsing is normally very good at soaking things up. We've seldom had to cancel in past years,” said Josh Landefeld, Plymouth YMCA executive director. “Everything is just waterlogged, it's just been so wet. We've got six more weeks. It's going to make for a lot of rescheduling.”

According to Landefeld, a wide pond usually stretches near the soccer fields. However, this year, the water spread to every part of the fields across from the school. 

Landefeld said he walked the fields on April 28—with boots on—knowing that he'd likely have to call coaches and cancel games planned for April 30.

The Plymouth YMCA teams haven't played a game and missed most weekly practices because of weather issues since the season began in mid-April (though one week was lost because of the spring break/Easter weekend).

Even the Plymouth Reign soccer club has been affected, though the teams usually cancel play only for the hardest rain or storms, said Zach Wilkes, a coach of under-16 boys and under-12 girls teams.

His teens play at on Haggerty Road. These new fields, part of the Plymouth Township park system, are irrigated.

“There's not a lot of standing water,” Wilkes said. “We've had to cancel a few games and practices, and the field was pretty muddy lately, but we can usually still play.”

Unfortunately for the teams, the April showers are continuing into May. The forecast for the next week shows at least two or three days of possible rain. However, none of the coaches said seasons will be canceled because of the wetter-than-usual weather.

“We'll find different days to practice and work with coaches, maybe play back-to-back games some Saturdays. We can be flexible,” said Landefeld.