Coach Tony
Member
Well, it's been one of those springs: rainouts, snowouts, freezeouts, etc. Every spring seems to bring its share of hardships for high school softball. But this one seems worse than any season I can remember. In any spring, it's about this time that almost every player, coach, parent and fan cries out for a logical solution to the weather problem spring in Ohio brings: Move the high school softball season to fall!!!!
While at first glance, this sounds like a reasonable and sensible solution, I'm going to delve briefly into why this almost certainly will never happen in Ohio.
There are two often mentioned proposals:
1) Move softball to the fall season and volleyball to the spring season - The idea being that volleyball is an indoor sport and would thus not be affected by the weather.
2) Move softball to the fall and leave volleyball in the fall as well.
The proposal to move volleyball to the spring will never, I repeat NEVER happen. JO Volleyball is too mammoth an entity to compete with. Because of OHSAA's current bylaws, if volleyball is moved to spring, a volleyball player would have to choose either to play JO Volleyball or high school volleyball. And in my area, where youth volleyball is very strong, many of those players would choose to play JO Volleyball (for a host of reasons: such as exposure to college coaches, freedom to choose your team, supposedly better training, etc.). High school athletic departments are all about participation rates, and any move that would lead to potential substantial declines in participation rates in a given sport will be met with strong resistance.
Anyone who has a daughter involved in JO Volleyball can attest to the massive, negative shakeup moving high school volleyball to the spring would bring.
The second proposal is only slightly more likely to happen (I guess anything better than NEVER is slightly more likely, right?). For one, moving softball to the fall without moving either volleyball or soccer to the spring would almost assuredly lead to a decline in participation rates in softball 1) because a lot of girls would choose volleyball or soccer over softball and 2) because the really good softball players would skip playing high school softball because they would want to play in fall tournaments and showcases with their travel teams - NOTE: Even after the recruiting changes that are supposedly destined to happen, fall ball will still be a very important recruiting time that many players will want to take advantage of and won't be able to if they play high school ball. Remember: OHSAA mandates that you cannot have any contact with your travel team in season AND participation rates are CRITICAL metrics for athletic administrators.
Their are other questions as well that simply moving softball to the fall would raise:
While at first glance, this sounds like a reasonable and sensible solution, I'm going to delve briefly into why this almost certainly will never happen in Ohio.
There are two often mentioned proposals:
1) Move softball to the fall season and volleyball to the spring season - The idea being that volleyball is an indoor sport and would thus not be affected by the weather.
2) Move softball to the fall and leave volleyball in the fall as well.
The proposal to move volleyball to the spring will never, I repeat NEVER happen. JO Volleyball is too mammoth an entity to compete with. Because of OHSAA's current bylaws, if volleyball is moved to spring, a volleyball player would have to choose either to play JO Volleyball or high school volleyball. And in my area, where youth volleyball is very strong, many of those players would choose to play JO Volleyball (for a host of reasons: such as exposure to college coaches, freedom to choose your team, supposedly better training, etc.). High school athletic departments are all about participation rates, and any move that would lead to potential substantial declines in participation rates in a given sport will be met with strong resistance.
Anyone who has a daughter involved in JO Volleyball can attest to the massive, negative shakeup moving high school volleyball to the spring would bring.
The second proposal is only slightly more likely to happen (I guess anything better than NEVER is slightly more likely, right?). For one, moving softball to the fall without moving either volleyball or soccer to the spring would almost assuredly lead to a decline in participation rates in softball 1) because a lot of girls would choose volleyball or soccer over softball and 2) because the really good softball players would skip playing high school softball because they would want to play in fall tournaments and showcases with their travel teams - NOTE: Even after the recruiting changes that are supposedly destined to happen, fall ball will still be a very important recruiting time that many players will want to take advantage of and won't be able to if they play high school ball. Remember: OHSAA mandates that you cannot have any contact with your travel team in season AND participation rates are CRITICAL metrics for athletic administrators.
Their are other questions as well that simply moving softball to the fall would raise:
- Would you also move baseball to the fall? This would wildly complicate things...
- How would you manage scheduling all those games / field maintenance, etc. Consider for example, at my last high school coaching job, part of the football team's practice field was (you guessed it) the varsity softball field's right and center field area
- Would small school districts be hard pressed to handle another sport to have to bus/transport? probably not...but it would be a consideration
