Kevin Martir
After four days in sunny Florida, the Terrapins baseball team returned to a chilly College Park and a snow-covered Bob “Turtle” Smith Stadium on Sunday, a result of last week’s storms. Tuesday’s game against Rider had to be rescheduled because of the conditions.
Every day, five facilities workers removed some snow from the field, but it still covered large portions of the outfield grass in the middle of the week.
That’s when coach John Szefc decided to take matters into his own hands. After practice Wednesday, he told the Terps to pick up shovels and start clearing their own field ahead of this weekend’s four-game series against Bryant.
“We got to a stage where I feel like if you’re going to get something done, you’ve got to do it yourself,” Szefc said. “We had to get it off if we had any chance of playing here this weekend.”
The Terps had to deal with wintry conditions throughout the preseason, but last week’s snow storm meant portions of the field, mainly the outfield, were unplayable.
Instead, the Terps used their indoor batting cages next to Shipley Field for batting practice and focused on fielding and pitching drills while outside. They even managed to hold a simulated game Wednesday.
The postponement of Tuesday’s game meant the Terps had four days off, which should be their longest break of the regular season.
“It was actually a nice day on Tuesday, so we all wanted to get out and play,” center fielder Charlie White said. “Playing a game is always better than practice, so we were disappointed.”
The Terps might have to wait one more day, however, because there’s a chance of rain in this afternoon’s forecast. With a doubleheader already scheduled for Saturday, four games could be crammed into two days.
The Terps aren’t focusing on weather patterns or game times or anything else out of their control, though.
After winning one game in last weekend’s series at No. 23 Florida, the Terps are concentrating on the little things, like limiting opponents’ big innings. Florida scored three or more runs in five innings over three games, a pattern Szefc said would usually indicate a series sweep.
Big innings, among other smaller details, are things that could be the difference between a series win and a series loss, Szefc said. The Terps took at least one game from every team on their ACC schedule — except North Carolina — last season, but they didn’t win their first conference series until the last weekend of April.
Florida and Bryant aren’t conference opponents, but they still provide similar tests to what the Terps will face when ACC play begins the second weekend of March.
The Gators are a perennial national contender out of the SEC and, as of right now, the Terps have four teams ranked in the Baseball America top 25 on their schedule. And while Bryant isn’t in the top 25, they did make the NCAA tournament last season, even beating No. 18 Arkansas in the regionals.
“Bryant might not be a household name to people in the Mid-Atlantic, but college baseball people know that that’s a very, very good program,” Szefc said. “And that’s the kind of people we want to play anyway. If you’re going to have a good RPI and do well in the postseason, you have to play good people.”
The Terps relished the chance to play in the warm Florida sunshine last week, and while they didn’t complain when they had to shovel snow off the field or practice in the cold, it’s something they know they have to deal with at this point in the season.
“It’s definitely a change because [we’re] coming from 65 and sunny to this terrible weather,” White said. “But we’ve been practicing here all fall and all preseason, so we’re used to it.”
