High school fields completely buried. City golf courses unable to open. Recreational areas with delays.
This is what happens when Utah’s record snowfall blows past the end of winter into the first few weeks of spring. Many just want to finally see the sun, while sporty people of all ages just want the chance to get outside and play, golf, camp or hike.
“Worst I’ve ever seen,” Highland High Athletic Director Daniel Shwam said.
At Highland, the school’s baseball and softball fields are inundated with snow. With no tarps available to mitigate the saturation, the Rams haven’t had a single home game on their baseball field all season. Softball has been able to play only a couple. The soccer fields, which are grass, “just never had a chance to recover,” Shwam said.
The Park City baseball team hasn’t had a home game all season, either, and had to engage in some scheduling gymnastics to find places to play games. This week, for example, the team’s two-game series against Highland will be played at Stansbury and Orem.
At Park City’s baseball field, it’s not even possible to get close enough to measure how many feet of snow is currently engulfing the facilities. Miners coach David Feasler said the snow is about even with the 4-foot-high dugout railing, and is “completely covered and packed.”
(David Feasler) A photo of the snow completely covering the Park City High School baseball field.
Feasler said the school district “has made no effort” to plow the fields or do anything else that would help the team hold home practices or games. So the coaches are trying to find solutions themselves.
Among those solutions, Feasler said, are ground thawing machines and going out to shovel once the pack lightens. They even will reach out to someone they heard about in a news report who uses a drone to drop garden fertilizer that is mixed with soil to help melt snow faster.
“We’ll do everything we can to stay on track and get our full schedule in,” Feasler said.
The girls’ lacrosse team at Brighton High should’ve played six games by now, but has only played two, coach Melissa Nash said. So far, they’ve been able to reschedule all canceled games, but will have to play three games per week upon returning from spring break in order to make up the difference.
“This will be tough on our athletes’ bodies — and minds,” Nash said. “That is a lot of game time back-to-back, which can be physically and mentally draining. Not to mention long nights for our players.”
Nash added that the boys’ lacrosse team has shoveled the football field several times, with some help from her girls. The teams have also discussed “stomping the snow off with our cleats” and “getting a four-wheeler with a plow.”
Kirk Merhish, Brighton’s track and field coach, said the Bengals have hosted only one region meet and attended one invitational this season. Rescheduling meets proves difficult because so many other spring sports share the same facilities and fields, he said. The track and field team has also helped shovel the field and track, which takes “hours.”
High school programs have had to use whatever indoor facilities available in order to get even a little practice time. Park City baseball uses a community center that has turf areas and four batting cages. Brighton girls’ lacrosse uses the school’s indoor turf field that is 50 yards by 50 yards.
Highland, however, doesn’t have as many resources. Shwam said he’s had to coordinate nine teams into two gyms and a weight room, and also deal with basketball teams wanting to get workouts in and shots up.
Part of the concern for coaches is that their seniors were freshmen in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of spring sports. The next year, multiple quarantines affected play as well.
“You don’t get to go back to high school again,” Shwam said. “That’s one deal. So you try to get them the best experience they can have. It’s been very frustrating, no doubt.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Highland High School sports fields are blanketed in snow on Wednesday, April 5, 2023. The snow has impacted spring sports a ton. Canceled games, logistical scheduling nightmares or finding unique solutions to get the snow out.
It’s not just high school sports that have been struggling amid all the snow. Golfers in Salt Lake who use the city’s six public courses have been swinging and putting far less compared to this time in previous years.
Matt Kammeyer, director of the golf division for the city’s department of public lands, said that over the last five years, golfers played an average of 21,771 nine-hole equivalent rounds from January through March at the city’s courses. From January through March of this year, golfers have played only 2,918 nine-hole equivalent rounds.
“In my 21 years working for Salt Lake City Golf, this is the latest in the year we have had this much snow on golf courses,” Kammeyer said, adding that Mountain Dell courses may not open until May.
Hikers, campers and other outdoor enthusiasts may have to wait to enjoy their favorite past times as well. Day-use areas and campsites in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest will have “delayed opening dates and potential for reservation cancellations” due to the state’s record snowpack.
Most sites will experience at least two-week delays in opening, the Forest Service reported.