As anyone who has mustered through the four seasons of Goshen, Indiana should know, there is nothing more unpredictable than the weather that comes with the spring season.
This year, it’s been a similar story.
For two consecutive weekends, Goshen College has seen multiple cancellations or venue changes for multiple reasons.
This last weekend saw baseball move to NorthWood High School to face Grace College and softball postpone a doubleheader against Spring Arbor because of heavy rain. The weekend before, softball’s home matchup against Huntington was changed to a road set and baseball postponed a doubleheader against Indiana Wesleyan because of low temperatures.
Needless to say, the changing of a supposedly set schedule throws a new wrench in the already busy day to day life of student athletes.
AJ Lenn is a third-year pitcher on the Maple Leaf baseball team hailing from Garden Grove, California. During his first season at Goshen College in 2023, rescheduling games because of weather was an entirely new concept.
“It was a pretty shocking experience,” Lenn said. “We didn’t have any games in any sport canceled or postponed because of weather when I was in high school. I never really thought of that being a thing before I came to college.”
Aside from postponements being a new concept, Lenn also explained that the change in schedule makes the student aspect of being a student-athlete exponentially more difficult than it already can be.
“We already miss class one, sometimes two days depending on the week with the initial schedule,” Lenn said. “Sometimes those multiple days mean that we miss the same class more than once. Then you add back the make-up games and all of a sudden we’re basically missing a full week of school. You just have to be super disciplined to get all of your classwork done on time and balance crazy game schedules.”
But the weather, the cold in particular, has also been a massive adjustment on the athletic performance side, especially when it comes to track and field athletes who are beginning to transition back outdoors for competition after completing the indoor portion of the season.
On March 22, both the men’s and women’s track and field teams competed at the fittingly named IWU Polar Bear Classic in sub 32-degree real-feel temperatures. First-year runner Caoimhe Farrell noted that moving from an indoor, climate-controlled environment to having to battle the weather during a competition requires extra steps in preparation.
“When we’re moved outside and not fully adapted to the cold, if you don’t activate your muscles properly it’s very easy for them to pull especially when you’re running something like a 100 or 200 [meter] where it’s full exertion,” she said. “You have to really focus on warming up your muscles when you go outside.”
But aside from the extra necessities to prepare the athletes bodies for competition, the competition itself becomes more difficult.
“It’s very hard to run and be out of breath constantly when it’s really cold,” Farrell noted. “It’s also pretty daunting to go outside all of the time when it’s raining or there’s thunderstorms. It will take some time to adapt… but we’re making do.”
Spring sports at Goshen College have just under a month to go in their respective regular seasons.
