Five: the number of games the CESJDS varsity baseball team had to postpone or cancel during the 2016 season due to inclement weather. They are not alone in facing this issue; every outdoor spring sports team at JDS was affected negatively in some way by the weather.

The difficulties for the varsity baseball team manifested themselves at the tail end of the season. The team did not play a game and only had three practices from the end of Spring Break on May until the playoffs began on May 12, and even had a playoff game canceled, twice.

Despite the missed games, coaches did their best to maximize the amount of time their teams were able to play. Math teacher and middle school softball coach Andrew Goldman planned for the worst in advance.

“I front-load my practices [at the beginning of the week] so that way if one of them gets canceled for rain, we can still have three practices,” Goldman said.

This strategy allowed Goldman, with the help of Athletic Director Mike Riley, to reschedule any missed games and practices while keeping under the middle school maximum of three sports events a week.

Games are usually canceled due to inclement weather, but sometimes they are canceled for other reasons, such as coaches not being able to attend. If this happens, Riley alerts the opposition and the rest of the PVAC.

“I talk to other athletic directors, and let [them] know what the problem is or they’ll let me know what the problem is,” Riley said. “Sometimes games are canceled because students have other commitments that came up and kids aren’t at school. It could be a number of reasons.”

Cancellations are not the only wrench in scheduling. This year in particular, all of JDS’ spring sports teams went through a scheduling predicament due to JDS’ late Spring Break. Aside from Berman Hebrew Academy, the other schools in the PVAC had an earlier break than JDS because none of them schedule Spring Break around Passover, resulting in JDS losing almost two weeks of possible game time.

The varsity baseball team played a total of only seven games, which led to it finishing fourth in the league standings, despite a record of five wins and two losses. This lower win total potentially cost the team a better seed in the playoffs. The team’s season culminated in a 5-3 loss in the team’s semifinal playoff game against the Sandy Spring Friends School.

“It kind of sets you back a little bit because everyone else is getting in a rhythm and is getting in more games so it can help them in the standings,” sophomore and varsity baseball player Matthew Landy said.

Another member of the varsity baseball team, freshman Max Rogal, said that a reason for the team’s playoff loss could have been their lack of games toward the end of the season. They also did not have many practices and felt the consequences on the field.

“We got to have a few practices here and there, but it’s definitely not as much as we would have liked,” Rogal said.

The number of cancellations this past season forced Riley to put in substantial work to make sure that the cancellations caused minimal damage to the teams they affected. Rogal believes that the school handled the scheduling conundrum as well as they could, and did not blame the scheduling for his team’s eventual defeat.

“A few things here and there could have been improved which ultimately might have changed the event, but I think in overall what happened is what was going to happen even with practice,” Rogal said.