From where Munford head baseball coach Noel Stephens sits, it seems the sports seasons should be reversed.“During football season, you start and it’s 110 degrees,” he said Thursday, as his team was preparing for practice. “By Week 10, it’s down to about 80.
“Baseball, you start and it’s 25 degrees, until it gets to be about 70 by the end of the year.”
Stephens isn’t the only head coach in the area frustrated by the weather. According to him, seven of the Lions’ scheduled contests thus far in 2008 have been either canceled or postponed due to weather.
“Last year, we didn’t have one game rained out all year,” he said. “The year of the drought, and we get seven games rained out.”
He’s not alone. Sylacauga, for example, lost to Childersburg in the county championship game on February 28, and didn’t play again until a home contest with Childersburg on March 11.
“We were just real excited to get out on the field and play again,” head coach Mike Gibbs said after the game, a 2-1 Aggie victory. “You can only practice so much.”
The ever-changing weather makes practice difficult as well, as Stephens said Thursday.
“When it rains and stuff, we try to get inside,” he said. “Then you have to deal with basketball early in the season, and the track team — they use the gym when it rains, too. You got nowhere to go.
“When you get pretty weather, you got take advantage of it and get in all the work you can.”
Stephens’ Lions haven’t played this week due to spring break, like most of the teams in the area. They’ll get back to work Monday against Clay County.
Weather permitting, of course.
“It’s supposed to rain, or chance of snow flurries Monday,” he said. “So that could be our eighth game (affected by weather).
“So, who knows? Me and (Birmingham meteorologist) James Spann’s gonna have to get on each other’s personal phone line, see what we can get worked up.”
SHOW ME THE ...: The Lincoln High football program received a hefty contribution recently, courtesy of its friends on Highway 77.
Waffle House in Lincoln, which profited greatly from Lincoln football during the fall via various promotional events on Fridays, donated a portion of that back to the LHS program recently, presenting head coach Keith Howard with a $1,500 check.
“They did a lot of fund raising, offering specials and that kind of thing,” Howard said. “(The donation) was real nice of them.”
Howard and the Golden Bears have spring practice scheduled to start Monday, May 5, with a spring game at Ashville scheduled for Friday, May 16.
COURT’S BACK IN SESSION: Aspiring collegiate tennis players will soon have another in-state program to consider, according to a recent release.
Marion Military Institute, located in west Alabama, recently announced the reformation of its men’s tennis program after a hiatus of nearly a decade and a half. MMI reformed its women’s tennis program in 2007.
“It was only a matter of time, in my opinion, before the Men’s Tennis program made its way back into the Athletic Department’s lineup,” first-year Women’s Tennis coach Chuck Wright said in the announcement. “Men’s Tennis is a natural fit for the campus, especially with the great number of young men who go to school here. Even if they don’t play tennis, they can pick up a racket and learn the game quickly.
“We have a pool of talent here that is athletic and competitive and smart. Those are the three essential ingredients in the making of a good tennis player, and they’re all located here. This is a veritable gold mine for men’s tennis.”
MMI strongly encourages any youth interested in a tennis scholarship to contact Wright via phone at 334-683-2366, e-mail at cwright@marionmilitary.edu or mail at Marion Military Institute, 1101 Washington Street, Marion, AL 36756, Attn: Coach Wright.
