One thing I’ve noticed since becoming a prep sports writer 15 years ago is that the disparity in weather in Wisconsin (and the upper Midwest in general) between the spring and fall are immense. When I was a kid/teenager and had to deal with it, I didn’t think anything of it: “It is what it is.”

I kept that attitude for about my first five years of covering high school sports, but then, I kind of had an epiphany. A thought so far out of left field I kept it in for nearly a decade because, while it made sense to me, it would likely be considered heresy among those in the prep sports world. 

The idea? To move fall sports to the spring, and spring sports to the fall. You see, football is “king”, and everyone equates football with autumn, and baseball with spring. Only, football is split between the summer and early fall, and baseball gets two months in the harsh and unpredictable Wisconsin spring. 

Then in 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic not only shortened high school sports seasons, but gave way to some outside-the-box thinking when it came to scheduling games and seasons. Finally, my clamoring would be partly tested out in real time.

While the alternative football season was shortened, it was a positive trial run, I thought. 

The hardest part of practicing football/playing football in March is being worried about field conditions. Some are worried the ground is too hard pre-frost thawing. Others don’t want to beat up the turf quite so early. I understand those concerns. And I understand that football will do more damage to a field than a game of baseball would on a similar surface, and that the players themselves would “feel it” more in football than baseball.

There are also more and more artificial field turfs being installed around the state every year. In these parts, that prospect is not more than a few years away. While the surfaces differ, and football was “meant” to be played on grass, I say support the change. The versatility and sustainability of field turf over a crowned dirt patch with shoddy drainage systems far outweighs the nostalgia tearing up the field for a year just to get photos in mud for one game in Week 5.

That, plus the fact that spring sports get a 12-week window for their entire seasons to be played. For baseball and softball, that’s 20+ games, outdoors, in a wacky and wild climate. Wisconsin springs carry all four seasons with them most weeks for nearly two months, meaning those with a ball and glove are either stuck outside in the wind and rain (or snow!) in non-optimal playing conditions, or they are practicing condensed in a gym again because yet another game is postponed.

And it’s like this every year. Already in 2022, less than half of the pre-scheduled games have been played through the spring sports season’s first four weeks because of either rain, cold and wind, snow, or poor field conditions. That’s 1/3 of the season.

But football is made to be played in the elements, right? And football is made to hold one game a week. Which means likely zero games would have been postponed to this point.

Wisconsin weather in late summer and early fall is more predictable. Hot and warm temperatures, with the occasional storm. For the most part calmer winds than in the spring, which would be optimal for outdoor sports.

What I’m proposing is simply this: Move baseball, softball and track to the fall season, and put football, volleyball and cross country in the spring. This would allow for football and cross country — sports that are used to competing “in the elements” to continue in a new monthly slot, and volleyball, and indoor sport, to simply shift its season. Baseball, softball and track would then move to a time with commonly less volatility in weather. In fact, don’t just shift those seasons, but in order to accommodate the 20-week football season, the rest of the prep schedules could be changed as well. The gender-split sports of soccer, tennis and golf could then swap with each other as well.

Some of the benefits other than fewer baseball/softball games being postponed, would be having arms ready for the season. Baseball has a pitch limit in high school, and without a “spring training”, a lot of pitchers are limited for even fewer pitches in the first few games of the season. Added to that fact that for every game that is postponed, it means more games in fewer days, which likely means fewer pitches and innings for the guys that are actually pitchers, and more innings for scrubs like I was to see the field based on necessity in order to follow the rules (which also could mean bigger blowouts). Giving baseball players a summer to be outside, throwing long toss or playing in club leagues, like Legion or Babe Ruth, would have those pitchers stretched out fully.

Would football lose the summer to go through conditioning? Yes. But football players would also have the basketball and wrestling seasons to get into shape. Most football players are multi-sport athletes already — which is a good thing. And it’s not like summer training is perfect already, plenty of guys miss or do less than optimal training already because of family vacations, summer jobs, and other things. 

In order to keep all schedules lined up (baseball/softball at 12 weeks for a season, which actually is quite short), let’s have them start August 1 and give them an extra week, meaning both seasons would be over — all state — by Oct. 31, or typically the same time as the World Series. Some years it may be warm in late October (in 2016 temps were in the 70s From Oct. 31-Nov. 5). In other years, it might well be in the upper 30s. We could take our chances on only a handful of postseason games being affected, rather than a slate involving 400+ schools.

With the current “spring” sports done by Halloween, that means the winter sports seasons (basketball, hockey, wrestling) could open practice Nov. 1 — two weeks ahead of the current schedule. The normal hoops season would then get done about two weeks early, and football practices could begin March 1, and the first games coming just over two weeks later. That means two games in late March, and the regular season wrapped by mid-May, just before graduation. A state championship would then fall in mid-June, around Father’s Day weekend. The temperatures in the state are not dramatically high yet. Even with an average high temperature in the southern portion of the state right around 80, it is much lower than the first weeks of August when the heat index can reach 100-plus.

There are several changes and holes to be filled in order to make this work — some holes larger and more meaningful than others. For one, changing the schedule for state championships would pose an issue for the WIAA. 

Camp Randall’s availability for June shouldn’t be a bother, nor should the Resch Center for the volleyball championships. Moving up basketball could be an issue. The Kohl Center, home of the boys tournament and the Wisconsin Badgers, usually opens up in mid-March when the Big Ten is holding the conference tournament. Pushing that up two weeks could inflict on that schedule. The same goes for the Resch Center in Green Bay, and both major arenas in Milwaukee. Some finagling would likely have to be done before opting to move the tournament to the Alliant Energy Center, a prospect that entices practically no one.

For baseball, right now state is held at Appleton’s Single-A stadium. The Minor League Baseball season is completed by the end of September, so outside of keeping the groundskeeper around for another few weeks, the site’s availability should be free. Softball, played at either Goodman Diamond or on the UW-Green Bay campus, would face zero scheduling conflict’s due to both universities playing their seasons in the springtime. 

Another potential problem has to do with private club sports, AAU, and summer baseball and softball traveling leagues. However, those leagues can adjust their schedules too. Since youth sports should be about enjoying the sport, learning the sport and camaraderie with teammates (and not about college or pro prospects, except for a select few), I’m less concerned with those private organizations and the scheduling conflicts this would incur. Because, let’s face it, having baseball or softball played dodging snow and air-bending throws around the wind to gun down a baserunner while everyone is bundled in a parka is hardly helping them grow as players. We can do better here in the upper Midwest, and we should.

The idea isn’t that crazy, especially once you take away the guise of an emperor’s crown off of football.

— Adam Krebs is the editor of the Times and his column appears sporadically throughout the year, as space (and dopamine in his brain) allows. He can be reached at editor@themonroetimes.com.