So I was looking at the weather forecast this week, and it appears after a rainy weekend, it will be mostly dry week starting Tuesday.
Of course it is. Spring high school sports in Southwest Washington don’t really get started until NEXT week.
Oh well, at least the athletes getting their final practices in before the start of the season can do it outside in dry weather.
Say what you want about the regional format of the basketball season, but one good change it brought was that it created a dead week in the prep schedule.
The winter prep season ended in Clark County on Saturday when the Skyview girls played for a trophy at the state basketball tournament.
The spring sports season won’t begin until Saturday.
Although there are some preseason girls golf jamborees set for Tuesday, the regular season starts Saturday when the Camas boys soccer team travels to Skyline in Sammamish, and the Fort Vancouver boys soccer team travels to play R.A. Long in Longview.
Also Saturday, the Washougal, White Salmon and Ilwaco baseball teams will head to Fort Vancouver for the Beatty Invitational.
Other than that, the spring season will begin in earnest on March 17.
Unlike the transition from fall to winter seasons, there is no overlap of sports seasons heading into spring. That limits the number of athletes who have to miss some days of competition as they transition out of winter and into their spring sports.
Preseason reports
The quiet week between winter and spring seasons provided me with an opportunity to send out preseason report forms to our spring coaches as we prepare for spring season previews.
A shout out goes out to Union baseball coach Ben McGrew and Mountain View tennis coach Mat Clark who sent in their preseason reports even before I had a chance to send prepared forms to athletic directors for distribution to coaches.
I did send out those reports late last week. So, coaches, if you don’t see these report forms soon, ask your athletic directors about them. ADs, if you haven’t seen an email from me, let me know and I’ll re-send those forms.
When we get enough of these forms completed and returned to us, we’ll post players to watch and season outlook of spring teams on our high school blog.
Time to vote
Before we can close the door on the winter sports season, we have to honor the best of the winter sports season with our All-Region honors.
Our All-Region athletes of the year and All-Region teams in the winter sports will be unveiled in the next couple of weeks. And, again, we are asking for coaches and fans to help us with the selection of our All-Region boys and girls basketball teams.
An online ballot will be set up for boys and girls basketball later this week at www.360preps.com.
Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep coordinator for The Columbian. He can be reached at (360) 735-4538 or tim.martinez@columbian.com.
