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Greencastle has lots of making up to do


All they've been able to do - except for one game each - is sit back and watch other teams play, and practice, practice, practice.

The spring season seems to passing the Greencastle-Antrim baseball and softball teams by.

Each team has played one real game and each has fashioned a blowout win. Both have been rained (or snowed) out four times. It's getting monotonous ... and there's a potential issue to be paid at some point in time this season.

"What can you do? There's nobody to blame," Blue Devil baseball coach Eric Shaner said. "We're just trying to have the best practices we can, because the teams we'll be playing will have played five or six games and we've had only one."

James Buchanan and Shippensburg have been affected nearly as much, with two games each being played by their teams.

The potential problem, of course, is that these teams will end up having a lot of weeks with three and four games, which is not the best for pitching staffs and makes coaches worry about injuries.

"The girls would rather play every day than practice, and I've noticed in our last few practices they are ready to finally play a game."G-A softball coach Mark DeCarli said, "Right now, we're not playing any games, and then we'll be having a bunch in one week. I think our pitching is pretty deep - we have two main girls and another two girls can throw - so I'm not too worried about that, but I get concerned about injuries.

Both teams have four games lined up this week, and that won't be the last four-game week, either, especially if more games get postponed.

"So far we haven't had any division games affected," Greencastle athletic director Vicki Ritchey said. "But some of the (postponed) games were with York County teams, and their league plays Monday, Wednesday and Friday and we play Tuesdays and Thursdays, so it's tough finding common dates.

"We purposely don't schedule too many games early because a lot of them get moved to later anyway. Now, we're going to be playing almost every Saturday. But we still do have a couple of days at the end, so there's a little wiggle room."

DeCarli is fortunate to have a deep pitching staff, and so does Shaner.

Waynesboro coach Greg Chandler said, "Greencastle has the best pitching staff in this area and it doesn't matter if they play one game or 20, they still have the aces to put on the mound against us. You are still going to have beat those kids. Starting pitching is everything."

"We can go three or four deep with our pitchers, and I wouldn't trade our arms for anybody's," Shaner said. "But if you get into your fifth or sixth and you're facing a senior ace, then it gets tougher. With the schedule we have, you can't just roll out a JV pitcher and expect to win.

"The best scenario would be for us to get some big leads, and then maybe we could pull somebody out. Or you may have to maybe drop one game to set yourself up for the next three or four games. We'll have some decisions to make."

They just hope that Ritchey doesn't have many more decisions to make in which "postpone" is one of the options.