A radical Oregon prep sports idea
Sometimes you have to think outside the box. My friend Dan Munson, the director of athletics at Bend’s Summit high school recently shared with me an “outside of the box” idea for Oregon high school sports. Flipping the seasons!
This has been a brutal year for weather and prep sports in Oregon… as is every year. So what if you flipped Fall and Spring? Keep the winter sports the same but do a complete change to the Fall and Spring lineups.
CURRENT OSAA SPORTS LINEUP – and what it would mean for those sports.
Fall – Moved to spring.
• Football – This one may be tricky, or it may be awesome! Football has pretty standard dates throughout the USA. But what if this allowed Oregon prep football to become a featured sport? You can imagine a big Oregon HS football game being on ESPN when there isn’t any other football going on.
• Soccer – Can be played in either the spring or fall throughout the USA… no big deal.
• Volleyball – Played indoors, so bring on the bad weather.
• Cross County – Would make for some exciting, wet meets. Totally doable. Would effect the national championships, which are held in Oregon.
Winter – No changes.
• Basketball
• Wrestling
• Swimming
• Skiing
Spring – Moved to fall.
• Baseball – Way less rainouts! Doesn’t baseball season go all year anyway!? You’d have the excitement of the World Series during the high school season.
• Softball – So much warmer and nicer!
• Track – Much warmer track meets.
• Tennis – A no brainer! Oregon prep tennis would be much better in the fall.
• Golf – Another sport that would benefit big time!
It’s just an idea… what do you think?
I am all for discussing new ideas like this, Josh! My thoughts are from the perspective of a soccer coach on the wet side of the hill. I think our fields would be a disaster in a spring season because it would be so wet. If we played on turf this wouldn’t be a big deal, however, all but one of my JV girls games last year were on a natural surface. As it is, our fields hold up well through approximately 75% of the season, and are messy towards the end. But if the fields were wet and messy at the beginning, they wouldn’t really recover and get better at the end – they would be dried up mud and dead grass. I think that softball/baseball is much easier on their fields than soccer and football regardless of the time of year.
Another thing that would change would be daily doubles. I wonder if we be able to run them during spring break? That would stink for the kids! I think it would be a hit to lose those 10 extra practices before varsity cuts are made, plus post season basketball playoffs might cut into our time with the team. I know this is something that the current spring sports have to deal with now, but I would hate to give that time up.
Another switch that I have discussed with the coaches on the boys side would be to have soccer and football play opposite seasons because the guys could play both sports. This would be a big boost to boys soccer programs at smaller schools that don’t really have enough athletes to field full football AND soccer teams.
Just my 2 cents,
Andrea
I’m for a 3 year contractual trial.
one coach commented – “The stumbling block is football with the summer lead in for practices. An institution”
another coach comment – “Always have thought tennis was good in the fall the mixed doubles (played in the fall) has only had 6 rain out days in 5 years.”
[...] wrote earlier about flipping sports seasons and I know it is a pretty radical idea. So here is a more realistic and practical idea… move [...]