I’m curious how you do it too.
Our softball season in Illinois is approximately 14 weeks. If you start it at the same time volleyball starts here, (August 8th in 2018), half of our state finals would be the first week of November and the bigger schools would have state finals the second week of November. (Which is also the peak of the whitetail deer rut in Illinois btw, lol).
By doing fall softball here, you start in good weather and move toward bad weather. Your state finals happen after frost/freezing conditions. You have a chance of having snow in the north.
By doing spring softball, you start in “bad” weather in theory and move toward good weather. Again in theory. So... what happens is non-conference games are scheduled up front and if they get cancelled, no big deal. In fall, you would have to play some of the most important conference games right out of the gate. And remember, most years are not like this one. We usually have better weather by now.
By doing fall softball you also miss a prime D1 recruiting period. In Illinois, we can’t have contact with travel teams during hs season and I don’t see that changing.
Here is the D1 recruiting calendar: https://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/2017-18DIREC_SoftballRecruitingCalendar_20170912.pdf
I think there are real recruiting advantages for student athletes in states whose high school sports seasons coincide with the respective college sports seasons. I say play high school softball while the college coaches are busy playing their season.
I played in a co-ed slow-pitch league last year that had its championship game the week after Thanksgiving and the weather was nicer for that [night game than any day we've had a game scheduled this year (We've played 8, canceled 10 so far; that doesn't count JV games).
The solution is simple: Make the season shorter. There's no reason the season needs to be 14 weeks long if you start in early August, since the weather will be nicer and there won't be much need for makeup games. Let's take this year: Start on August 6th. First games on August 20th. Have a 6-week regular season (no spring break to worry about and a lot nicer weather), then start the State Series the first week of October. Yes, the end of the playoffs will be colder. But teams will actually get to play more than a dozen regular season games. And, quite frankly, I'm more concerned about the hundreds of teams that get screwed out of games than the handful of teams that will have to play when it's 50 out.
Average temps (Chicago): March 45, April 56, May 66/August 81, September 74, October 62. If our primary concern is weather and actually getting as many games in as possible, and I'm not suggesting it is or should be, it's a no-brainer.
I won't speak to how it affects recruiting, but the weather argument isn't a great one.
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