With schools already on Spring Break, the regular season is already preparing to hit its busiest stretch. After every team has had at least a week off from league games — some even have two week breaks — once school gets back underway on Monday, the race to get in every league game will commence. The final three weeks of the regular season — beginning Monday — will be full of league games, with high stakes attached to nearly every game left. The weather has made what would already be a challenging stretch even more of a daunting task for all of the area’s baseball and softball teams.

Sectional playoffs for high school baseball and softball begin the third full week of May. Because of that, softball teams are required to finish all of their league games before 7 p.m. on Monday, May 20, while baseball teams have to be finished with league play by Wednesday, May 22. In both cases, teams will be left scrambling to fit as many games they can into a tight window.

“Bad weather is always a concern when you play baseball in Western New York,” said Chautauqua Lake baseball coach Bryan Bongiovanni. “Inevitably, there is a week or two that gets washed out and we have to play the majority of our league schedule in a three week span beginning in May.”

Some teams are in worse positions than others. Both Dunkirk and Fredonia baseball teams have only played four league games to this point, while the Dunkirk and Fredonia softball teams only have three league games under their belts. There are seven teams in the divisions they play in, CCAA Division 1 West. As each team in the division plays each other once at home and once on the road, that means there are 12 league games on each team’s schedule within the division. With only three or four games played so far, that means either 2/3 or 3/4 of their league schedule remains, with only three weeks left to play.

OBSERVER Photo by Braden Carmen Shown is the flooded outfield grass on the Dunkirk High School softball field in late April.

Teams will do everything they can to get those crucial league games in. One unfortunate casualty in the situation these teams are in is the decimation of their non-league schedules. Many teams, like Dunkirk and Fredonia, schedule some of the best competition around Western New York (and sometimes even out of state) to see where their team measures up.

With those games not having any standing over league banner races or postseason seedings like league games do, many non-league games are cut from the schedule to make room for the league games. As a result, many teams will not reach 20 regular season games, like they are allowed to schedule before the season, even with an extra week to the season from a year ago. That is one of the reasons why this past week, teams have been trying their best to get non-league games scheduled over Spring Break.

“Thankfully, we have an extra week this year to alleviate some of that stress and perhaps keep most of our non-league games,” said Bongiovanni.

Dunkirk baseball coach Frank Jagoda agrees that the way the calendar fell helped get some games in at the end, but Mother Nature is not the only one to blame for the position teams are in.

“There is a lot of room to get games in at the end,” said Jagoda. “But we’re in this position because teams are not always following the rules of the league. Our league says that when you rain a game out, you play the next available day. … Teams aren’t willing to play the next day, to play on Saturdays. … For whatever reason, teams keep pushing things back. It can’t be this way.”

Fredonia baseball, however, believes this year’s schedule is in its favor — at least at the moment. The Hillbillies kept the potential for rainouts in mind when scheduling before the year began, opting to leave the final week of the regular season open for games to be rescheduled to.

“I’m pretty happy that we’ve gotten nine games in so far,” said Fredonia baseball coach Vince Gullo. “We have a week and a half open for rainouts to reschedule games. … I’m happy we guessed right with how we set up our schedule.”

Fredonia softball has not been as fortunate, with only three games played to date, through Spring Break. Because of that, Fredonia softball will likely have to cancel most if not all of its non-league schedule.

“Everything is getting pushed back to where all those league games are getting washed out,” said Fredonia softball coach Jesse Beers.

While the lack of non-league competition and less game action overall presents an issue later on for teams heading into the postseason, the bigger concern with the schedule over the final three weeks of the regular season is the amount of games in such a short window. As teams try to get all the games in they can, the time for rest and practice dwindles away. For example, the Fredonia Lady ‘Billies softball team currently has a scheduled stretch from May 6 until May 13 where over those eight days, Fredonia plays seven times — with six games in a row, with only the Sunday off before starting off the next week — and that’s assuming that weather doesn’t push more games back for later on in the month.

“It seems like we’re running into this every single year,” said Beers.

A stretch like Fredonia’s is more brutal than ever on softball pitchers, as most teams use the same pitcher for most of the innings they play. By the time some of these teams reach the postseason, there is a good chance their best pitcher may not have everything left in the tank that they would if the schedule was not so condensed.

While softball does not have a pitch count, allowing teams to use their best pitcher as much as they choose to, baseball is a different story. Because of pitch count restrictions, teams are unable to throw their top pitcher as much as they wish. A glaring example of this — though they likely would not admit it — is how Fredonia was hurt by that exact predicament in the postseason a year ago. The Hillbillies were forced to use their ace, Derrick Walters, to get past Depew in the sectional semifinals — a game that ended in extra innings. Because of that, when Fredonia advanced to its eighth straight sectional final, Walters was unavailable — and Fredonia lost to Olean. Things may have played out differently had Walters been available.

“That hurts teams that dont have big rosters,” said Jagoda. “When you start bunching up games, you only get a kid once. … The teams that have better second and third will do better in the league and beyond.”

When it comes to the regular season, teams will face a very similar predicament as the one Fredonia had in the postseason a year ago. In league games with regular season standings and postseason seedings on the line, teams will have to rely on their pitching depth more than in years prior to the pitch count implementation. Because teams cannot rely on their ace to pitch all their crucial games — especially not over the final three weeks of the regular season — there is a greater chance for league championship banners and postseason seeds to be deceiving. The best team already doesn’t win every time in sports, but when you take away a chance for a team to put its best player out on the mound when it matters, the chance for an upset is heightened even more.

“The new pitch count rule makes it even more difficult and really tests the pitching depth, especially for smaller schools that don’t have a lot of arms,” said Bongiovanni.

Even without a pitch count restriction, many softball teams will be forced to use a second pitcher because of the way the schedule is set up this year.

“It’s really going to benefit teams that have more than one pitcher,” said Beers. “It’s also going to benefit the teams with a lot of veteran players and players with travel ball experience because they’re more used to playing this many games in a short period of time.”

Division races and postseason brackets this year may come down to which team has more depth in its rotation and which head coach can maneuver his chess pieces throughout the next three weeks the most effectively. The pressure will be on the more inexperienced pitchers and the head coaches even more than usual over the next three weeks. Whether it’s the most fair way for a champion to be crowned or not, it sure sets up for an exciting finish for the rest of the regular season.

“Division titles are great, but sectional titles are even better,” said Beers. “If this sets us up to be more experienced and more ready for playoffs, we’re better for it.”

Twitter: @bradencarmen