Northern Utah school districts cancel spring sports games due to remaining snow

CACHE COUNTY, Utah — The large amounts of snow is making it tough for some Utah school districts to get their spring sports underway.

As of Monday, schools in Cache Valley and Box Elder County, Utah, are just moving snow where they can into large piles. But many of the fields and tennis courts are still usable.

“(You) see, that’s where our long jump and our high jump would be, but we’ll have to make some accommodations to try and have those inside,” said Dave Swenson, director of secondary programs at the Cache County School District.

Some things are pushed out by the snow, but when it comes to the tennis courts and the baseball diamonds, Swenson said all bets are off.

“We’re used to always being a late start-up here in Cache Valley, but this is definitely unprecedented,” he said.

But the softball, baseball and tennis teams are going to have to wait a bit longer.

“We’re weeks out. We had a meeting this morning with our principals and athletic directors, as well as our transportation director, to come up with creative ideas,” Swenson said.

And getting creative may include moving their games down to Utah County, as they’ve already called off several preseason games.

Meanwhile, Box Elder High School is facing similar problems as Cache Valley, but not as bad, according to Jesse Roberts, Box Elder High School’s athletic director and assistant principal. Their baseball team is spending time sprinkling ash over the snow.

“With some sunlight, it warms up that black much faster than it would the snow and melts it much, much faster,” Roberts explained.

He is hoping they can be back playing out here on Friday.

“Everything with spring sports in northern Utah is high hopes. You always hope for the best and see what happens,” Roberts said.

But in the meantime, they’ve had to make some compromises.

“It’s not easy to schedule eight spring sports inside of gyms, and everybody’s got to give a little,” he said.

Other northern Utah counties like Weber and Davis also had to move their practices indoors. The Weber School District told KSL TV they would likely postpone some of their Tuesday home games.