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MARCH 22, 2018 WEEKLYNEWS.NET - 978-532-5880 9<br />
Sports<br />
Time for spring sports, but you’d never know it<br />
By Steve Krause<br />
and Anne Marie Tobin<br />
With temperatures dipping into<br />
the teens this week, all you have<br />
to do is look out the window to see<br />
that someone forgot to tell winter to<br />
go away.<br />
But with the official coming of<br />
spring this week, could it be that<br />
warm weather is just around the<br />
corner? Well, maybe.<br />
This past Tuesday marked the<br />
spring equinox, the day when the<br />
sun shines directly on the equator<br />
and the days become longer… and<br />
presumably warmer.<br />
But with another nor’easter<br />
heading our way (forecast for yesterday<br />
into today), it still feels like<br />
the dead of winter. With a couple<br />
of feet of the white stuff still piled<br />
high from last week’s nor’easter<br />
and the prospect of more this week,<br />
this spring has left most local<br />
athletic directors scrambling to<br />
squeeze too many teams into too<br />
little indoor space during the first<br />
week of tryouts.<br />
In Peabody, a plan to plow the<br />
football field was temporarily delayed<br />
until this week’s latest wintery<br />
blast passed through.<br />
“We had planned to plow earlier<br />
but once that forecast came in, we<br />
moved it back,” Peabody athletic<br />
director Bob Bua said. “There is no<br />
sense in doing it twice. Our main<br />
concern now is getting in the boys<br />
soccer jamboree that runs all day<br />
Saturday.”<br />
Peabody softball coach Butch<br />
Melanaphy said he is hopeful that<br />
once the football field is plowed,<br />
additional indoor space will open up.<br />
PHOTO | ANNE MARIE TOBIN<br />
Peabody girls lacrosse coach Dennis Desroches makes his point to<br />
captains Alyssa Saraceni (left) and Sarah Buckley during Monday’s<br />
indoor tryouts at the high school.<br />
“Once the lacrosse teams and<br />
track teams can get outside, things<br />
will definitely give baseball and<br />
softball more time in the feld<br />
house,” he said. “But until the snow<br />
is gone and the fields are dry, we are<br />
inside and there is zero likelihood of<br />
playing games as scheduled during<br />
the first week of April.”<br />
Melanaphy is hoping that next<br />
year, things will be different when<br />
and if proposed new baseball and<br />
softball turf fields are in place at the<br />
high school.<br />
“We’ve already had one meeting<br />
with the mayor and I know that Bob<br />
Bua and others, including me, have<br />
gone over to Lynnfield to check out<br />
their fields,” he said. “It all comes<br />
down to funding, and I guess they<br />
are hoping for someone to step up<br />
with some donations, but that will<br />
change everything for us, as long<br />
as it’s done right, and I think every<br />
agrees that we need to do it right,<br />
with lights, a retractable fence, nets<br />
protecting the football field and<br />
tennis courts,a batting cage area and<br />
warmup space. Space is limited, but<br />
we are all hoping that we can get<br />
these new fields.”<br />
In Lynnfield, while there are no<br />
plans to plow any of their five turf<br />
fields, the boys tennis team took<br />
matters into their own hands. They<br />
traded in their racquets for snow<br />
shovels to clear one of the courts<br />
at the middle school and conducted<br />
Monday’s first day of tryouts<br />
outdoors.<br />
It wasn’t easy, though, as to access<br />
the court, you needed to scale<br />
a 4-foot high snowbank to get from<br />
the parking lot to the court.<br />
“After last week’s storm, they<br />
Kasasa LPW_LA_SA3x7.ai 1 3/16/2018 10:39:17 AM<br />
worked on shoveling small areas,<br />
six kids at a time for 20 minutes,”<br />
said coach Joe Dunn, Sr. “We used<br />
it for conditioning, and it paid off<br />
today with one court open. It wasn’t<br />
too bad out there as long as you<br />
were moving around.”<br />
Lynnfield athletic director<br />
Michael Bierwirth said there are<br />
several reasons why Lynnfield does<br />
not plow.<br />
“I believe the decision not to<br />
plow was made when the turf was<br />
installed due to insurance issues<br />
and possible damage,” he said. “We<br />
talk about it all the time, every year.<br />
It’s expensive, and you also have to<br />
figure out where to put the snow.<br />
Here, there really isn’t any place to<br />
put it except the parking lot, which<br />
you can’t do, and you also can’t push<br />
it into the wetlands, so it’s better to<br />
just let Mother Nature dictate when<br />
we can get onto the fields.”<br />
Bierwirth said it costs anywhere<br />
from $3,000-5,000 to plow the stadium<br />
and ball fields.<br />
Lynnfield baseball coach John<br />
O’Brien, a veteran of the North<br />
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“what-can-you-do-about-it” attitude.<br />
“I coached in Winchester and a<br />
couple of other places and we were<br />
shoveling the fields off,” he said. ‘I’m<br />
not expecting to do that. Unless you<br />
get lucky, you’re indoors for a week.<br />
If you get outside, it’s a bonus.”<br />
Nevertheless, O’Brien says he’s<br />
scheduled scrimmages for the end<br />
of this week but doesn’t see that<br />
happening.<br />
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