Over two weeks ago, sportswriters across Washington wrapped up their high school winter sports coverage with the completion of the state basketball tournament.

This past week, the majority of high school spring sporting events kicked off their first games and contests across the Eastside region. On March 13, I planned on covering the Skyline Spartans/Redmond Mustangs girls softball matchup in Sammamish.

Those aspirations were derailed.

When I awoke in the morning I peered out the window and saw sizable raindrops falling from the sky. After arriving at work, the first thing I did was check the KingCo website to see how the schedule was shaking out. Quickly I discovered the softball game featuring Skyline and Redmond softball teams had indeed been cancelled due to the large amount of precipitation.

Immediately I sent off an email to photographer Jim Nicholson, who was planning on taking photos of the game, to inform him of the news. I wasn’t surprised by the cancellation. This is the norm for the month of March in Western Washington. In the 12 years I’ve been a sportswriter, I have encountered countless cancellations of softball, baseball and tennis matchups at the beginning of the spring sports season due to adverse weather conditions.

You can have an ironclad plan set in place for coverage but it can disintegrate due to Mother Nature’s wrath at the drop of a hat. Thankfully not all spring sporting events are cancelled due to shoddy weather conditions, but cancellations can still become a bothersome problematic issue that remains completely unavoidable. Instead of covering the Skyline/Redmond softball game, I ended up covering the Newport Knights/Bellevue Wolverines non-league soccer matchup on March 13. The only time I have seen soccer cancelled is due to thunder and lightning.

Spring officially arrives on March 20. I surely hope spring-like weather accompanies the change in the calendar in the near future.