When I think of the month of March, all I begin to think about is the best month on the sports calendar. You’ve got the highly entertaining men’s NCAA basketball tournament and the start of the new baseball season.
But in the not-too-distant past, I used to despise the month of March as a former student athlete for a variety of reasons. The number one beef I had was when I was running track, this would always be the time where mother nature would work her ugly magic.
You’d get on a nice streak of finally getting off the human hamster wheel known as the treadmill and get outside for once, then the unpredictability of early spring weather in Wisconsin strikes and dumps a snowstorm upon you.
One of the worst examples of this came during my high school track career of my sophomore year when we were scheduled to host our first outdoor meet of the year. I was getting so excited for this meet as I thought competing at home would help give me and my teammates some extra juice in our events.
Next thing you know, the Thursday before the meet, mother nature decided to drop 7 inches of snow on my hometown. Safe to say nobody was happy as we had to reschedule everything surrounding the meet.
While this is just a normal example for schools in this region, nothing is more frustrating for high school and college athletic departments to put on these big outdoor meets, then all of a sudden, a major weather event occurs.
This then forces athletic departments involved in these events to cancel travel plans and waste a ton of money on travel expenses that don’t get used.
What’s worse for the athletes is that time away from competing eats away all the energy they invest into their sport. You spend countless hours in the weight room, on the practice field and doing training exercises, and what’s the payoff?
There’s no payoff. I’ve seen it from both sides as an athlete and as an official who’s put in charge of making decisions on whether or not to cancel games. When I’m umpiring a baseball game and the weather is suspect, it pains me to suspend games due to weather because I know that feeling young athletes get.
Now as depressing and gloomy March may seem at times, March is awesome if you’re an athlete. Nothing excited me more when I was competing in track and field and March roll around on the calendar.
Not only is that sense of competitive fire reinstalled in you after a long, cold winter of training, but you just want to knock the expectations you set for yourself out of the park.
The sense of joy you see on your teammates’ faces once you get back and train as a team is palpable and you just want to collectively crush it.
March also provides the same joys you feel at an individual level getting back and competing. The sports calendar indicates this with the March Madness tournament going on as well as Opening Day for baseball beginning at the end of the month.
I’m of the opinion that the Opening Day for baseball needs to be a nationally recognized holiday and should be celebrated as such. No other sport has more aura for their opening games than baseball does.
It not only celebrates the dawning of a new season and a summer filled with joy and the scent of grilled meats permeating the air, but it also celebrates a thaw from a winter we desperately want to escape.
So here’s to March, the most exciting and most miserable month of the year.
Mikalofsky can be reached at mikaloee7353@uwec.edu.
