Weather

[mattmets]

Currently work in Iowa, so if I may chime in...

Originally Posted by jTheUmp

I grew up in Iowa, so I can speak to this a little bit.

Pluses of high school summer baseball:
1) it allows athletes to participate in 4 school sports if they choose, which is a major plus for the smallest schools.

Definitely a plus. Some 1A schools who bring 10-12 kids to a game couldn't during the spring.

2) The weather is a lot better on both the temperature and precipitation fronts. Yeah, we'd get some evening thunderstorms, but in most cases our fields would be good-to-go by the next evening.

It's hot as hell, though, and the humidity doesn't help. I've been fortunate over the last seven years, never had that much rain and almost never two straight days

3) Longer daylight hours mean you can start a doubleheader at 4 or 5 pm and finish before sundown, even on a field without lights.

Almost everything I work starts at 5 or 5:30 PM and we get into the second game with daylight left. We can also play mornings, so umpires can get a lot more games with 10:30 and 5:00 start times.


Minuses of high school summer baseball:
1) It interferes with summer jobs and family vacations.

At least in our association, we have a ton of teachers. If anything else, it helps our numbers compared to basketball season, which often has 4/4:30 starts.

2) It's incompatible with travel ball/legion ball. Neither of those were a thing for high school aged kids in Iowa when I was growing up, where in MN it's quite popular.

Yup.

3) You end up in a situation where a student has already graduated, but is still on the baseball team. This happens with spring baseball too, but only for a couple of weeks rather than for the bulk of the season.

Also yup, but never heard of it being an issue with anything except college orientation.

4) You end up with some graduated students deciding not to play baseball in their senior season for any number of reasons. In my case, I knew I was going to be playing football in college, so I skipped my senior baseball season to spend more time running and lifting weights. Of course, I wasn't that good at baseball anyway, so it was a pretty easy decision to make.

Honestly haven't heard much of this, but I'm sure it happens.

I grew up in Connecticut and played a 20-game season from early April to late May in some rough weather. I'd much rather work the way I do in the summer here, even though it was a culture shock initially.