RHS Baseball team conducts Spring training out of state?

H.S. baseball: Snow putting season on ice

APRIL 3, 2015    LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2015, 12:30 AM
BY MARK J. CZERWINSKI
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD

Westwood baseball coach Kris Izzo was hard at work building up his pitcher’s mound over the weekend, celebrating the Cardinals’ first day out on their own field this preseason. All of a sudden, he heard a noise that is usually so out of place on a baseball field.

Especially four days before opening day.

“I hear this crunch of snow,” Izzo said. “So strange. I look up, and our kids are walking in and out of the dugout through snow.”

The Cardinals were lucky. They may have some snow lingering by the dugout and behind home plate, but at least the rest of the field is clear and playable.

That puts them well ahead of a few North Jersey teams who are still waiting for some sort of thaw to set in even with Thursday’s seasonable weather. And almost everyone endured a preseason that kept them inside and off their frozen fields, setting back their preparation.

“In my 30 years as an educator, this is the worst I remember,” Demarest athletic director Greg Butler said. “We’ve had other bad Marches, but not like this. This is the worst, not because of the snow, but because it’s been so cold along with the snow.”

That’s why you have fields like the one at St. Joseph. It’s always a little colder up on that hill in Montvale, and the parts of the field along the third base line that are shielded by trees – a blessing on sunny days in the late spring – had so much snow remaining that the Green Knights had to move Thursday’s opener to Morris Catholic.

And the drains in the dugouts are frozen and layered with ice.

In Mahwah, the field was covered by a coating of snow Wednesday morning, just hours before the Thunderbirds’ first game.

Up in West Milford, where winter always seems to linger a bit longer, weekend pictures of the Highlanders’ field look like a Christmas card scene. Half the field is covered in snow, and Wednesday’s opener was moved to Wayne Valley.

“We’ve played two scrimmages on turf, but we haven’t practiced outside except for fungoes in the parking lot,” said West Milford coach Joe Jordan.

“It’s funny because the school district had drainage put in over the summer. It worked really well in the fall, but a new drainage system doesn’t make a difference when the ground is frozen and there’s nothing to drain.”

Some lucky teams such as Demarest, Ridgewood and Don Bosco were able to head off to places such as Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Florida to squeeze in some workouts and scrimmages.

https://www.northjersey.com/sports/h-s-baseball-snow-putting-season-on-ice-1.1301951?page=all