Rainouts bite, but so does eating chalk

By RJ Walters / Daily News Sports Editor

This column was published in the Hillsdale Daily News on April 15, 2009

Sure May flowers are splendid, especially in the second cloudiest state in the nation (I will never move to Washington, mark my words) but at what expense?

As it looks right now, at the expense of all athletic directors, teenage athletes and media outlets covering high school sports.

Singing "rain, rain go away, so all the area's sport stars can play," in the shower every morning for the past week seems to have done little, other than convince me that "sleepless sports journalist" was indeed a better career choice than "underground, indie rock star wannabe."

Rainout after rainout to start the spring schedule has had plenty of real implications though. Just ask Kathy Bondsteel or Pete Beck or any one of your local ADs. They are forced to try and play Jenga with their schedules prior to the season, only to see a small headwind knock a few blocks down, blocks that may never get put back into place.

ADs are generally under-appreciated as a rule, and a few extra hours on the phone without an extra dime coming on their next paycheck is all part of it.

As for high school athletes, cancellations are the worst. For one, it gives coaches another two hours to play drill sergeant and it also means parents can do even more nagging about homework because their kids don't have something taking up four hours of their time after school. Rainouts are the equivalent of giving up ice cream for lent only to find out worldwide production of ice cream was halted a day before Easter.

And parents might not admit it, but watching their local team while eating a hotdog from the concession stands totally beats making dinner, doing the dishes and catching up on office work that just begs to be done. Plus it doesn't help that many fans organize their schedules around high school sports teams and another stinkin' storm might mean they are out of town for the make-up date.

For me, someone who still can't believe he gets paid to roll out a lawn chair, take stats and sip on a nice cold Coke from time to time, mushy fields mean staying glued to my chair, damaging my vision by staring into a certain 24-inch wonder world and writing columns that try to fill the void of game-winning home runs and record-breaking long jumps. As fun as it is, rain days are a definite low on the continual up-and-down histogram of everything sports.

Sure enough though, it can get plenty worse in the unpredictable, often comical sports universe. Here are a few things to remember when you groan about the next rain date (which could be today!).

Rainouts are better than:

Being a battling bather
That's right, the Mt. Clemens High School mascot is just that. I always feel sorry for players who are on teams that will get more recognition for their ridiculous nicknames than for their achievements. Also in Michigan the Zeeland East High School teams are nicknamed the Chix, yes with an X, while their Zeeland West counterparts are the Dux. No guy wants to buckle up his chin strap for the purpose of being called a girl and I can only imagine how much quacking opposing fans do when Zeeland West players step to the charity stripe. Even worse though is the Detroit Pershing Doughboys. Offensive linemen might have some fun with that, but what 17-year old volleyball star wants "Doughgirl" slapped across her chest? The teams names around here might seem boring at times, but as you see, maybe that's not a bad thing.

Eating chalk
Just trust me on this one. And no it wasn't some stupid dare from my childhood I'm bringing up. It was a wild-nutso enthralling sports moment — gone terribly wrong. I was about 16, I was practicing on the high bar for an upcoming high school gymnastics meet; I was working on a combination that included a few "giants", no not the type you see in nightmares, just a rotating, twisting thingy. I don't want to bore you, so here's the climactic moment — I went flying off the high bar, saw cement and my future flash before me and instead of someone having to call the ambulance, I plummeted head first in a metal chalk bin. White power erupted all over, the bin broke my fall and I hit my knees, the only real scuffs from a potentially serious injury. The only problem with trying to sound all manly when I tell this story is the fact I was wearing a unitard and short shorts. And FYI, chalk tastes bad — for like the next week.

Shooting on the wrong basket
I was actually better at gymnastics than I was at basketball, but this story is about a teammate. A teammate who boxed out his opponent on a free-throw, grabbed the ball with both hands and went back up with it. Picture perfect execution, other than the fact he almost scored for the other team. It might be the only missed shot of his career he's happy to have clanked. It was also one of the last meaningful plays of his high school hoops career as friends and fans came to find out.

The University of Alaska Anchorage hockey team's road schedule
In 2008-09 the Sea Wolves (wouldn't Polar Bears suffice?) had it about as bad it gets for D-I college sports. The 20 road contests isn't too out of the ordinary, but the distances they had to travel to go to places that look like they should be used for backdrops in small-town horror movies is almost terrifying in itself. The Sea Wolves had to make three trips to Minnesota, the state of 10,000 lakes (and several hundred rinky-dink towns), one to North Dakota, another to Wisconsin and one to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. If you love a sport you love it, and my guess is the Sea Wolves would play hockey in the middle of the Northwest Territories if they had to. But still, I'd much rather play sports for the University of Santa Barbara and travel the West Coast

Going 0-for-a-career
If you think rainouts are unbearable, try a blackout — on winning of all things. Savanna High School in Illinois lost 63 straight varsity football contests before finally winning a game. That means somewhere between six and seven graduating classes never won a single game in their entire careers. There's something to be said for coming together through tough times, but there's also something to be said for a losing streak that stretched through the greater part of two presidential terms. Being dubbed a lovable loser though has no greater appeal than in the world of sports, part of its endearing charm. Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated (at the time) took a trip to watch them play the No. 2 team in the state for a story he was doing. Savanna got absolutely creamed, but the consolation prize was Reilly hopped on their bus after the game and treated them to pizza, and eventually SI published an article on them.

Only in sports are crazy things like this normal and only in sports does an inch of rain matter so much.