State baseball postponed

SALINA -- Overnight rain forced the Kansas State High School Activities Association to postpone the entirety of the Class 4A-Division I State Baseball Tournament, according to an announcement made on the association's website early Thursday morning. Fort Scott High School was to have played a first-round game against Rose Hill Thursday afternoon. The field at Dean Evans Stadium was too waterlogged to play on following a thunderstorm overnight and rain was in the forecast for Thursday and Friday.

According to the KSHSAA, play will begin Sunday on a "rolling schedule." The first game of the day will begin at 11 a.m. with each game following 30 minutes after the conclusion of the previous one. This means the Tigers (17-4), the No. 2 seed, could face seventh-seeded Rose Hill well before the 4 p.m. start time listed when the brackets were first released.

"It complicates things greatly," Fort Scott head coach Josh Regan said as the team began the process of checking out of their motel Thursday morning. "We have to go home. We have to try and be as positive as we can. We hate to go home because we'd like to watch the (softball) girls play and win. The boys are disappointed that they don't get to watch the girls play.

"I definitely understand the decision. Quite frankly, it's the right one. We need to get back so we can practice the next three days. We need to stay sharp in order to come back up here and play well."

The FSHS softball team is also playing here in the Class 4A-Division I State Tournament. They faced Andale/Garden Plain in the first round at the Bill Burke Complex, which is located just over a mile from the baseball facility and sits near a creek.

With no field to play on and many other baseball fields in the Salina area soaked, the Tigers would have had no place to practice even if they stayed. Between that and the expenses that would have racked up by allowing the team to stay here at least two extra days, there was no other option for the baseball squad but to go home.

"If it's going to rain for two, three days, all we do is end up sitting in a hotel room," Regan said. "That doesn't work for us."

In a previous announcement, the KSHSAA stated that the semifinal and championship rounds of both tournaments would be moved one hour earlier on Friday to 10 a.m. The Tribune did not have clarification at press time if Monday's schedule would revert to the original schedule with the first games at each venue at 11 a.m.

The weather forecast for Salina called for a 50-percent chance of rain Thursday and 40 percent Friday. There is no rain in Saturday's forecast but tournament officials apparently came to the conclusion that the fields would not dry adequately in time to play on Saturday.

Regan doesn't feel that the sudden changes in plans will affect his ball team and noted that every team in the tournament is also affected.

"We just have to roll with it," Regan said. "That's OK. It's not ideal but you can't control those things and we talk all the time about controlling what we can control. We have to manage how we respond to the situation as opposed to worrying about it."

Of the eight qualifiers, only McPherson is located less than 100 miles from Salina.

The first game Sunday will be between No. 1 seed Topeka Hayden (21-1) and Bishop Miege (10-12). Next, Augusta (16-6) will take on Kansas City-Piper (14-6). Fort Scott and Rose Hill (15-7) will be next. The game between Ottawa (16-5) and McPherson (15-7) will conclude the day's action.

Monday's first semifinal begins at 10 a.m. with the second, which the Tigers will be in if they win, will follow 30 minutes after. After that will be the third-place game. The championship game concludes the tournament.

Because there is no Tribune publication on Monday, every game of the tournament will be published in Tuesday's edition. However, there will be updates on the Tribune's website, www.fstribune.com, following Sunday's action.