Iowa HS sets national baseball win streak record

Wimps.

 

IIRC, there's no high school baseball in Montana, but there is a thriving Legion program in its stead in the summer.

 

About one-quarter of Wisconsin schools play for a separate state championship in the summer, mostly in the Milwaukee area. The rest play for four state titles in the spring season.

 

No wonder New York sucks in baseball. Well, except the Yankees, whose players come from anywhere but NY.

 

Yeah, that was the first thing I thought of. The playoffs down here in the deep south have been over since the weekend before Memorial Day. Of course, their season starts in February, too.

 

I always felt bad for baseball and softball coaches in Iowa. They were more like babysitters in the summer and paid as such.

 

One of the things I learned about high school baseball and softball in Iowa: You are eligible for varsity the summer before your freshman year, and you are also eligible the summer after you graduate, which means someone could play for five years.

 

Yep. One of our two local teams at the state softball tournament has a pitcher who has started for them for five years. Was a varsity starter between her eighth-grade and freshman years.

Usually, we get a three-week break between the end of the winter season and the beginning of the spring season, no time between the spring and summer seasons (state track meet ends on a Saturday, then baseball and softball play their first games the following Monday), four weeks between the summer and fall seasons (of course, we're working on football section stuff during those weeks) and three weeks between the fall and winter seasons (less if we get someone to state football semifinals).

If there is one good thing about it, it's that the boys and girls associations prohibit any school from basketball games or wrestling meets during the time between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day. Which means we get a week's break as well. No tournaments to cover, nothing. Some of the newer coaches squawk about it, because they've come from states where there are holiday tournaments. But I like it because it gives us a break.

 

No breaks in Texas. You go from one season straight into another. Girls will play their last volleyball game on a Friday and play their first basketball game on Tuesday, for instance. Small schools will postpone the start of a new season if their other team is in the playoffs.

In fact, if you're lucky enough to have a team go to the state semifinals in baseball, you get a seven-week break from then until two-a-days. That's it. (Next year we get eight weeks because of a calendar shift -- can't start football on July 31. Not yet, anyway.)

 

Really? I didn't know that. I do know that their is a rule in lacrosse that they'll stop play after a goal or penalty for one or two water breaks per half if the heat index is above certain point.

 

Going back to the heat thing, Kentucky just started a (somewhat ridiculous) rule that play has to stop for 10 minutes every half-hour if the temperatures hits the mid-90s. I realize they do it for the kids' safety, and for sports like football and soccer I would definitely agree with it, but it's dumb for baseball and softball because you get a break for half the game anyway. The players have complained more about it than anyone else.

 

If they did that down here, they'd never get a game in. They do have heat timeouts at the 6-minute mark of each quarter for the first half of football season, though.