Idaho is a special place when it comes to spring, one day it’s sunny and dry, and another there is 6 inches of snow. This takes a huge toll on outdoor spring sports, making many ponder should there be spring-time sports in Idaho?

First of all, let’s discuss what spring sports there are. At Thunder Ridge, we have a variety of spring sports including baseball, softball, golf, track, and tennis. The main problem is most of these sports are heavily affected by the weather.

For example in baseball and softball sometimes late snow or rain makes field conditions too dangerous to play in. Another example is in golf, many times tournaments are canceled or forced to move indoors because due to the weather courses are closed.

As Thunder Ridge Senior softball player Brynly Dabell said “ I think the worst part about spring sports is just the weather. Lots of games get canceled and it’s kind of annoying. Spring sports are so fun but it would be more fun if we had consistent games and nothing got canceled.”

We all love the spring sports and no one wants to see these banished at all however the idea of maybe moving the season seems appealing. As Dabell claimed, “Softball as a fall sport would be absolutely amazing!”. 

Many argue against moving these spring sports to the fall because they think it would force multi-sport athletes to choose what sport to play. However, moving the season could make the season a lot less chaotic for athletes.

One option would be to switch seasons on certain sports. For example Volleyball and softball. Softball is played outside so it would seem that it would make more sense to have it as a fall sport. All though like everything, this has its drawbacks too as Idaho fall weather could potentially heavily affect the end of the season for these sports.

The debate on spring sports has many sides and is very complicated making no solution easy.