Reasons I Struggle Writing This Time of Year

Cutter's Log - Stardate 2102.40.40
Current Song - Promises, Promises (Naked Eyes)

As the years pile up in my high school sportswriting career - this August will be ten years at it - I'm starting to collect all of my frustrations with writing articles in late March and early April.

Sportwriters consider late February/early March and late October/early November as their moments of little patience. This is no different for me and NISB, as we cover over 90 high schools.

I'd like to add the timeframe of late March/early April to that. This is the transition from the winter sports season to the spring sports season.

Here's why:

1. Air conditioned gymnasiums, pools and bowling alleys give way to blustery winds and potential hypothermia. Adding to this is the bad habit of leaving Sterling with the weather feeling nice, only to arrive at my game 60 miles away when the temprature fell 20 degrees.

2. There are too many stats and technicalities involved with baseball and softball, compared to basketball, wrestling, swimming and bowling. I have to read, re-read, and read again many statistical items: such as whether a fielder's choice counts as a hit or an at-bat, and the difference between a earned run and a run. I'm so used to the winter sports that the knowledge of hardball technicalities just doesn't roam through my head.

3. I can't decide whether to stand or sit. Every winter sport, except for swimming, involves sitting at a table. Then if I do decide to sit, I'm lugging around my lawn chair as if it's a backpack on a Siberian hike.

4. The games get over by 7 p.m. - free time!

5. The best games are being played in Timbuktu, or Disney World.

6. I have always had compromised dexterity, hence my absolute need for a recorder. Then the wind gets real bad where you can't hear anything.

7. "Oh, crap! It's Honor Roll season!"

8. This thought bothers me when it happens: The timeout call of "time, blue." I never hear "time, gray" in wrestling, "time, yellow" in soccer, or "time, stripes" in other sports. Is this just another excuse to make short grunting noises in place of actually saying words?

9. Being distracted because I'm playing the game of "guess the indicator" with the baseball coach (all to the tune of Divinyl's "I Touch Myself")

10. Those 4:30 start times. Or is it 4:00?