Hardesty
Rootstown's Keith Waesch is ready to play ball
 A year ago at this time, an eerie silence fell over ballfields and stadiums at high schools around Ohio and across the country.
No loud pings of bats hitting balls. No piercing shrills of coaches’ whistles. No excited shrieks of fans in the stands.
Instead, all was quiet in the “new normal” imposed by Covid-19. Fields sat empty, equipment rooms remained locked, students headed home after school instead of to practice or games.
Spring sports had been canceled.
The Ohio High School Athletic Association’s decision to shut down the entire high school spring sports season, in step with coronavirus protocols handed down by Governor Mike DeWine, came on the heels of the sudden cancellation of the boys and girls basketball state tournaments shortly before they began.
With the winter sports season reaching a premature and unprecedented end, Rootstown High School athletic director and baseball head coach Keith Waesch knew what was coming next.
“I don’t think the cancellation of spring sports a year ago was a huge surprise to anyone given what happened at the end of the winter season in 2020,” he said. “My initial thoughts were with the Class of 2020 and the fact that those seniors weren’t going to get one last spring to compete in high school sports.”
Now, Waesch and Rootstown are in the same position as every other coach, athletic director and high school in the state: Trying to crank spring sports back up after what amounts to a two-year layoff. Baseball, softball, track and field, and other sports played in the spring, like their fall and winter counterparts, have been given the go-ahead by the OHSAA to play ball.
“Our kids are extremely excited to be back on the fields and track,” Waesch said. “It’s been almost 700 days since they’ve had the opportunity to compete for their school, and they can’t wait for games/meets to begin.”
While the familiar sounds of spring are finally back at high schools everywhere, the situation is anything but familiar for Waesch, the Rovers’ longtime AD and ninth-year baseball coach who now faces a new set of unprecedented issues from a year ago.
“The biggest challenge is getting the kids acclimated to the new Covid guidelines and getting them ready to compete,” he said. “Once again, the majority of our spring sports student-athletes haven’t competed for 22 months. I think it will undoubtedly affect the quality of play, at least in the first month or so of the season.”
That’s because while it’s one thing to brush the dust off the equipment, it’s quite another to knock the rust off the athlete.
“I think that’s the biggest question mark heading into spring sports in 2021,” said Waesch, whose Rootstown baseball squad went 23-5 overall and won the Portage Trail Conference County Division championship with a perfect 10-0 mark the last time the Rovers took the field in 2019. “I don’t know if it will be as noticeable in track, but I’m guessing it will be more visible in baseball and softball because many schools just have a few letterwinners returning. I just can’t imagine the quality of play being as good, but that’s no fault of the student athletes. I also believe it goes without saying that kids who played summer ball in 2020 will have a huge advantage over those that haven’t played in 22 months.
“As a head baseball coach as well as an athletic director, I've noticed more of a lack of knowledge of the game. After all, these kids really didn’t have the opportunity to watch as much baseball due to the cancellation of the college season and the shortened MLB season.”
As luck would have it, though, the weather in Northeast Ohio — always persnickety in March — has been cooperative of late, allowing Waesch’s Rovers to get on the field and begin making up for lost time.
“In my 20 years of coaching high school baseball,” he said, “I can’t recall a better month of March. That’s really been huge because we have had more outside practices than indoor practices. It’s safer outside in regard to the virus and we’ve been able to get a better look at our teams because we have had four scrimmages, which is unheard of in Ohio.”
While Waesch does expect a mostly smooth transition from the 2020 cancellation — "I don’t see any major logistical issues with spring sports returning after being shut down a year ago,” he said — players and coaches will have to adapt to competing under the usual Covid rules.
“The major changes will just be following the Covid protocols/guidelines given to member schools from the Ohio Department of Health and the OHSAA,” he said. “Most of the protocols are based on social distancing and wearing facial coverings when not competing. There are others as well … such as pitchers not being able to go to their mouth at all. Obviously, that’s a big change for some kids."
In that respect, spring sports will fall in line with what athletes in the fall and winter seasons have had to endure. However, unlike the fall and winter, the OHSAA is shifting the spring sports schedule back to normal — a welcome word to anyone after the past 12-plus months.
“Schools in Ohio have been given the green light to schedule a full complement of games,” Waesch said, “so baseball and softball teams are able to schedule 27 games just like any other year. Most track teams don’t ever reach the maximum number of competition days permitted by the OHSAA, so track schedules will also look very similar to recent years prior to Covid.”
So while the spring symbolism of hope and rebirth rings truer now this year more than ever, the heartache felt by his players after last year’s cancellation is still etched in Waesch’s memory.
“I was devastated for the Class of 2020. Kids are only in high school once, and having 25 percent of your playing days taken away from you is a big deal,” he said. “Unfortunately, the shutdown last March happened with very little warning. However, as devastating as it was for the Class of 2020, many will argue it was even more catastrophic for the classes behind them because the 2020-21 school year has been far from normal with fewer contests being played in almost every sport."
Still, the games are back on this spring. And in the end, that’s all that really matters as humanity digs itself out of its latest crisis.
“I'm thrilled for our spring sports athletes,” Waesch said. “Obviously, all of them want to succeed and compete for conference and state titles, but I also know that many of them now realize that there are very few guarantees in life. So to just have the opportunity to play is going to feel like we have won something this spring.”
Tom Hardesty is a Portager Sports columnist. Contact him at tom@theportager.com.
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