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Winter uprising making practice difficult


As you may have noticed, 6.8 inches of snow fell in Mobridge on Sunday. You may also know the forecast for Friday speculates there may be twice that much on the ground with the next storm headed our way.
This late winter extravaganza is making life difficult for everyone, but it is the spring sports teams at Mobridge-Pollock High School that are finding it especially wearisome.
While he has had to deal with ugly weather before in more than a decade of coaching spring golf, Lady Tigers coach Jason Weisbeck has never had to spend the entire preseason and early season indoors.
“I’ve never had a season like this,” said Weisbeck.
The course, driving range and putting green at Oahe Hills Golf Course have snow for a hazard, a problem that won’t be going away soon, especially if the Bridge City is hit hard with the expected blizzard on Friday.
That has kept the Lady Tigers indoors to work on an outdoor game. Fortunately for the coach and his players, Mobridge residents Charles and Becky Peacock own a golf simulator and have been gracious enough to allow the high school team to used it at will.
“They’ve [the Peacocks] been awesome,” said Weisbeck. “It’s been a blessing. I ask other coaches what they are doing, and they say they have been watching videos.”
While many of the teams in the state have been stuck in a golf classroom, the Lady Tigers have been swinging their sticks.
“Our girls have hit well over 500 balls each,” said Weisbeck.
In addition to getting to play the simulated game, the girls are also getting feedback from the machine. It measures things like club speed and how far and accurately the girls are hitting the ball. It teaches players things about their game that they can learn visually.
“I tell them, but this shows them,” said Weisbeck.
As far as getting to compete, Weisbeck is not sure how much of the season is going to be obliterated.
“It is what it is,” said Weisbeck.
Right now he is hoping to get on a course by the end of the month. That may be in Winner or perhaps even as far south as Vermillion.
He said that ideally, they will be able to backload the schedule, but with the courses in the state opening so late, the courses might not want to open days for high school when their members have been chomping at the bit to get out and golf, too.
“They’re going to have to take care of their own interests,” said Weisbeck.
First-year coach Cody Stotz has found that far too much of the track preseason has been spent indoors.
Although the team did get outdoors Monday and expects to do so the rest of the week. The practice Monday was spend running up and down the hill on the east side of the school, not on the track and Tiger Stadium.
He said he has been relying on his experienced assistants to help get through a trying time of getting work in for 120 high school and middle school track athletes.
“Luckily Coach Zahn has been through this before,” said Stotz, “and Coach Stenberg and Coach Scott have been around enough. We’ve been getting some things done indoors.”
Stotz said the biggest difficulty with workouts has been trying to work on relays and finding workouts for their 18 throwers. They do have some indoor blocks to work on starting and the jumpers have been able to work on form.
“We’re running stairs and lifting weights,” said Stotz. “The biggest problem has been relays, but fortunately most of our kids ran relays before.”
With the aforementioned 120 tracksters in the school, simply finding space for everyone has also proved a difficult task.
“The middle school team has done mostly conditioning and lifting weights,” said Stotz. “The biggest thing is just keeping them interested.”
It has been an effort at both levels to keep the kids from getting bored.
“Boring, yes,” said Stotz. “We’ve been practicing since early March.”
The annual Rotary Relays have been postponed, so the team is already into next week looking for its first chance at competition.
Unless things change, that first meet will be the Big Dakota Conference Meet in Chamberlain on Tuesday, but that too, could change depending on the effects of this weekend’s coming storm. After that are the American Legion Relays in Pierre on April 20.
The school is looking into running the Rotary Relays, or simply and invitational on May 4, but the final decisions on holding a meet on that day are still pending.

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