Colorado weather has a habit of disrupting spring sports
With another snow storm moving through the Denver area and some of southern Colorado, a slate of spring sport competitions were wiped out on Wednesday.
They’ll likely be made up, but it’s just another year and another wave of weather that has become disruptive. It’s became a yearly tradition.
As difficult as it is for athletes and schools, weather disruptions have also been the cause for many tales among Colorado media. On a day where not a lot of competition was played, it seemed like a good idea to provide a forum for those stories to be told.
Ryan Casey (CHSAANow.com)
This is hard to decide, because spring sports are basically run by weather every season. But, I will say, the thing that sticks out the most to me is probably the state track meet two years ago which saw a massive snowstorm overtake Jeffco Stadium early in the morning of what was supposed to be the meet’s first day. Ultimately, we had to condense the meet to a two-day format because of this storm.
I remember pulling into the parking lot at Jeffco around 6 a.m., and it was kind of snowing – and I knew moisture alone was going to be a problem for the meet. But I figured maybe we would have to delay a bit, and adjust the schedule. Which, honestly, isn’t exactly common for a spring sports championship event.
I don’t exactly recall what we were expecting that day in terms of a forecast, but I do know it wasn’t what we got. Which was a MASSIVE amount of snow. It just kept coming. By about 7 a.m., it was clear the meet wasn’t going to start on Thursday at all (in fact, it didn’t start until Saturday). Around that same time, I decided to walk around the track with my camera. It was surreal. This wasn’t just a random spring snowstorm which was going to dry up by the afternoon. It was a full-on snowstorm that we get in the winter.
Now, every time it snows in the spring, I text Jenn Roberts-Uhlig (who oversees track in our office), and ask if she wants to drive by Jeffco to relive the memory.
Anthony Sandstrom (Pueblo West View)
I was at a girls soccer game once and the wind had kicked up quite a bit. It started getting bad.
It was probably blowing around 40 mph and the keeper for one of the teams set the ball up for a goal kick. The ball went into the air and immediately flew backwards into the net for an own goal.
Dan Mohrmann (CHSAANow.com)
The first girls golf tournament I ever covered was the Class 4A tournament in Carbondale. Jennifer Kupcho had just won her second-straight title while Cheyenne Mountain won the team trophy.
The players were called into the clubhouse twice for rain and I was checking the weather quite a bit because I was driving back to Colorado Springs that day. The tournament finally ends and I get my stories written and jump in the car.
In Glenwood Springs, I get a call from a friend of mine who was a coach at that tournament. He told me it was starting to rain at Eisenhower Tunnel and it looked like it was going to turn to snow.
I made it to the top of Vail Pass in a two-wheel drive Kia sedan rental before getting hit by an all-out blizzard. To this day, I don’t know how I made it down into Frisco without crashing. It was probably one of the worst Colorado weather driving experiences I’ve ever had.
Since then, Kupcho has become the No. 1 women’s amateur in the world and the winner of the inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur tournament.
Dennis Pleuss (Jeffco Athletics)
After the “Bomb Cyclone” on Wednesday, March 13, I was planning on covering girls soccer – Green Mountain vs. Lakewood on March 15 at Lakewood Memorial Field. With only one stadium manager at LMF there was some doubt if we could get the field cleared, along with the sidewalks and stands ice and snow free before game time at 4 p.m.
I ended up going over to LMF around noon and shoveled sidewalks, along with the stands while the stadium manager Chris Gray could focus on getting the field plowed off. We got the OK by 2 p.m that the field would be playable. I continued clearing snow until about 3 p.m and then covered the game. Green Mountain took a 4-0 victory over Lakewood.
Kevin Lytle (The Coloradoan)
Every spring has a few of these days, but May of 2017 is one of the most memorable to me. I was halfway to Jeffco Stadium from Fort Collins when I received word the first day of the state track meet was shut down due to snow. I turned around and went home to go back to sleep.
But my most memorable crazy-weather game was in the state baseball tournament of 2017. Rocky Mountain led Mountain Vista 4-3 after six innings at All-City Stadium when rain started lashing down, forcing postponement. The finish of the game was moved to the next day, across the city to Metro State. I found a place to stay the night in Denver and went to Metro early the following day with Rocky Mountain needing three outs to make the title game. Of course, Mountain Vista scored to tie the game before the Lobos won with a walkoff in the bottom of the seventh. A two-site, two-day walkoff is hard to beat.
Nick Rothschild (KRDO)
I believe it was last year at state track – I basically had to drive through a snow storm at the crack of dawn to get up to Jeffco. It was freezing cold and raining and everything was wet. Out of sheer luck I had a rain cover in my car so I managed to protect the camera but I was wearing running shoes and within the first eight minutes of walking around shooting video my feet were soaked. I was miserable.
I remember wondering how in the world these kids could run and compete in such terrible conditions – but to their credit they kicked butt and many of them found a way to enjoy the adversity.
Marcus Hill (Pueblo Chieftain)
I believe it was in 2017 when I planned to cover state track and field (for the Salida Mountain Mail).
Well, Mother Nature decide to give us snow the day of the meet — as I was headed to Denver.
Then it was moved to Friday-Saturday. Instead of heading to Denver, I drove down to my mom’s house in Colorado Springs on Friday. In the midst of that, Mother Nature disrespected us again and forced the meet to go from Friday-Saturday to Saturday-Sunday.
Fortunately, Salida had a golfer in the Denver area as well as its baseball team.
So, I got a hotel for the night that was close to both. Then I learned weather could possibly delay both of those.
I stayed strong and didn’t cry.
Thankfully, everything went off as planned for golf and baseball.
It was a fiasco, but everything went well in the end. The joys of spring sports.
