Board Votes To Move BHS Softball Season To Spring
The Bourbon School Board voted Thursday to move the high school softball season to spring, with a reduced schedule in fall 2018.
By playing a shorter schedule next fall, the players won’t go nearly 18 months between playing competitive games.
Activities Director Brian Witt proposed the change in September after another season of low turnout. There were only 11 players on the roster in 2017. Volleyball is more popular with female student-athletes at Bourbon.
Witt said he met with Bourbon eighth graders to gauge interest and found that only three would be likely to play next fall. When he met with high school students, he found that many of the volleyball players would have interest in playing during the spring.
Witt also had a meeting with parents, who shared concerns, including the long gap between fall 2017 and spring 2019.
Bourbon’s fall baseball program costs around $300 per game, so Witt used that as a model to determine what the cost would be to run a shorter fall softball schedule.
Currently, it costs the school around $4,700 for a softball season. The spring baseball season costs around $4,000 and the fall baseball season costs around $2,000.
“Instead of doing a full schedule, we can do a conference schedule plus a couple games where we’re competing,” Witt said, with the goal being to emulate the fall baseball season.
Bourbon will schedule Saturday away games to reduce the amount of early outs that come with traveling further away.
One of the concerns parents had was the Gasconade Valley Conference, Witt said.”I’m unsure if we’ll get into a conference during the spring,” he said.
Witt had conversations with GVC members and a handful of schools have interest in playing during the spring, with the exception of Cuba.
Witt said he had to quickly firm up the schedule and notify schools of what Bourbon’s intentions were because breaking a contract for a game would cost the school between $200 to $500.
As of Thursday, Witt had 11 games scheduled for spring 2019, along with a tournament, bringing the total to 14.