High School season officially closes

Macon East completed its softball tournament over the weekend as one of the final events in the spring sports season. (By Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

Games have been canceled, schools have been closed, a state of emergency has been declared and grocery stores are running out of bread and toilet paper as the coronavirus pandemic sets in.

What’s next?

For high school teams that battled through an extremely wet February and are now hitting their stride, the stoppage of play by Alabama High School Athletic Association teams on Tuesday (and Alabama Independent School Association teams last Saturday) is unfortunate if play resumes in three weeks and even worse if it doesn’t.

“You don’t (know how you’re going to perform), especially after spring break and them being off for three weeks,” Macon East Academy softball coach Glynn Lott said. “I think this group is very competitive and they’re hard on themselves. I know they work on their own. Most of them play travel ball so they’re used to that part. 

“Right now, they’re telling us we might can practice some, but I think that’s going to change. So it’ll be wait and see. It might be two weeks from now and they might change their minds and let us play. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Nobody does.”

While the area’s baseball teams are average at this point, the deluge of rain that interrupted practice time in February and games later that month have kept teams from developing at the same pace as in past years. Several, like Trinity, have used this week’s Gulf Coast Classic as a bonding catalyst in the past but LAMP was prohibited from playing by an MPS directive and Trinity and Alabama Christian were forced to finish play on Tuesday.

Area softball teams with proven pitchers have fared better and teams such as Catholic, Tallassee and Elmore County High are off to the best start in years. Other perennial powers, such as Macon East, are right where they hoped to be at 23-1.   

“We’re playing good,” Lott said. “I think we can play better. You don’t ever want to quit playing, especially with all the rain we had early in the year and you’re just now getting to where you’re seeing (the ball well at the plate). It seems like every time we do, it rains again for a week and we’ve wasted another week, then we start again and now we have this mandatory time to be off.”

Macon East won what may be its final game of the season on Saturday by beating another state championship contender, Edgewood Academy, in the championship game of the Macon East tournament. 

“I told them there’s no guarantee we’ll play again,” Lott said. “(Ace pitcher) Caroline (Capps) had hurt her (non-throwing) hand but she wanted to pitch today. So that’s why we did that.”

Capps is one of two seniors on the team, along with Lott’s daughter Emi. Both have accepted scholarships to play at the collegiate level but were hoping to bring the school another state title this May. Now, there may not be another game left to play.

“It’ll be hard on the seniors,” Lott said. “There are a lot of (uncertain) things right now. As a headmaster, you’re looking at a lot that’s going to be hard on seniors. What if you don’t….

“We’ve got proms, we’ve got graduation, we’ve got senior sendoffs, senior day. It’ll be horrible for them.”

Breann Morrison, one of eight juniors on the team, summed up the feelings of the players. 

“I just want to play,” Morrison said. “All this coronavirus is shutting us down. We’ll just all come back better than ever.”