While the Titan spring sports season officially started on March 20, teams that play outdoor sports weren’t able to set foot outside until April 1.

Not only were the teams left to practice inside after their canceled games, but due to the recent weather, going outside is still not guaranteed on a daily basis.

“I can’t let anybody out on grass areas in cleats because that will destroy the fields forever,” athletic director Steve Rockrohr said. “So what that does is that moves everybody indoors.”

According to Kay Sopocy, assistant athletic director and head softball coach, moving all teams indoors has posed a difficult challenge. Some teams have even been pushed to practicing in unconventional spaces such as the East Cafeteria, running around the school or doing conditioning in the pit, Hannah Mason, sophomore softball player, said.

“It’s just a big cause of frustration,” Sopocy said. “We [are forced to] go into this practice schedule that goes late into the night […]. The spring coaches are great, they’re flexible, and they know that that is part of the deal– that you have to accept the weather because we have no control over it.”

The influence of weather doesn’t stop with outdoor sports. Indoor sports are used to having practice space and time, but now have to divide their time with other sports, Sopocy said.

“Normally after spring break we never even worry about anybody practicing inside, but this year we had to,” Rockrohr said. “The indoor sports, volleyball and badminton, are so used to having their run of the place. […]. So now, they still want to practice longer but [other] teams are coming in and […] they’re not used to it.”

As the weather gets warmer, it would only make sense that scheduling problems would become easier. According to Rockrohr, that is not the case.

“We haven’t even dealt with rain yet,” Rockrohr said. “At some point, you’re playing so many days that it’s going to rain in April, and when it starts raining, then you have to make a reschedule of the reschedule; then you start losing games.”

An additional problem for teams is the difficult transition from indoors to outdoors, according to Annie Lesch, head coach of the women’s lacrosse team.

“I think in [our] first two games, we could definitely feel the difference in going from the inside space to outside,” Lesch said. “A lot of the errors we were making was just because we hadn’t had that spatial stuff to work on [such as] transitions, clears and getting back on defense.”

Rockrohr has also noticed the problems faced from the lack of outdoor practice.

“Teams aren’t playing the way we’d hope they would if they would’ve started playing [outside earlier],” Rockrohr said.

Sopocy believes that this year is considered some one of the worst spring weather conditions for sports seasons yet.

“The biggest thing is that it’s just very frustrating for all,” Sopocy said. “You have to be creative in your practice […] because you get to the point where you need to move on with skills and strategies, and it’s hard to do in a small space. This ranks up there with one of the worst [years yet].”