I know a few Huskies who are looking for a good home. This isn’t a classified ad: they play baseball, softball and lacrosse. Their fields, wet and brown, are so far unplayable.
After the long snowy winter and with fields that take forever to dry, our athletes have been forced to travel all over — to play their home games.
The softball team has used St. Joe’s and the University of New England as surrogate homes, baseball heads to fields in South Portland, and the lacrosse teams have hosted their opponents on the turf fields at Deering High School and Portland’s Fitzpatrick Stadium.
And it’s no small wonder how these games have been played in Maine at all. A lot of kudos have to go out to the athletic programs for being as resourceful and resilient as they are.
After all, it’s not easy playing spring sports in southern Maine. Even when the snow stops flying and the fields are clear, the winds howl and the temperatures are, well, less than tropical.
The other day I watched the baseball team absolutely battle it out in a home/South Portland game against Husson College.
The cold air made me and the ink in my pen pretty lethargic. I wanted to climb into the backseat of my car and start a small fire.
But the players and coaches handled the game with a great deal of resolve. Even though they were playing on a field not their own, a field that didn’t have a scoreboard or an abundance of seating, the Huskies battled for the entire three and a half hours (which, to me, seemed like nine and a half).
When Husson tied the game in the ninth inning, Coach Flaherty rallied his troops and took home a hard fought win. In more ways than one, it was, as Flaherty told the Portland Press Herald, a game of survival.
These stories aren’t uncommon.
I’ve drove by Fitzpatrick Stadium one blustery night and saw the women’s lacrosse team pummeling St. Joseph’s.
Last week the softball team, borrowing fields in Standish, came away with a double-header sweep of Salem State.
Not only is it impressive that our players can compete under some of the most adverse conditions, but there is something to be said of the community’s willingness to rally behind our teams and give them a place to play.
I hear often enough that USM sports sometimes get snubbed by the city of Portland or the local media, and while that might hold a few teaspoons of water, the fact of the matter is that it’s pretty impressive that our teams can find local places to play with relatively few problems.
Arguably the most trying part of playing spring sports is that, for teams like the baseball and softball team, a large chunk of games are played in short succession in unfamiliar places.
Through our athletic administrators’ willingness to collaborate with and/or compensate different entities in order to get games played, this element is mitigated, at least a little.
By not continuously postponing games or canceling them outright, coaches and people like athletics director Al Bean are ensuring that our players are given the best opportunity to succeed. This should not go without notice.
With any luck the school will win the Powerball and our fields will can be modernized with a heavy dose of artificial turf.
But until then, the MacGyver-like capabilities of our coaches, players and administrators will do just fine.