Charlie Brown implored his baseball team not to go home even during a flood, but as far as I know he never shoveled snow. Here’s the Maryland Terrapins, proving why they should be considered a contender in the ACC, regardless of talent. Outfieders positioned atop giant snow banks always = awesomeness. Following the jump is an email forwarded to DC Sports Bog from Maryland baseball coach Erik Bakich, explaining how the Terrapins shoveled their home field after a blizzard, got in a full nine-inning scrimmage, and made $8,000 for the program in the process. Sweet.
As you all know, the blizzard of the century came through Maryland dumping 4 feet of snow and ice making it impossible to practice outside…
Except for the hard nosed, aggressive, competitive and blue collar Maryland Baseball team who only missed 2 days of outside practice in the last 2 weeks. I can’t tell you how fired up I got watching 36 players shovel snow like they were out to set a world record. I told them we were in a boxing match with the weather, and there is no amount of snow that can cover Bob “Turtle” Smith Stadium and Shipley Field that we can’t shovel out of.
Not only did we punch back every time we got hit with more inches and feet of “thundersnow”, we scrimmaged every day last week and are headed down to Miami playing our best baseball. The athletic administration had planned on hiring an outside company for snow removal……well after talking with our CFO, he agreed to hire the
Baseball team to clear other athletic fields. It was estimated to take 10 hours and they agreed to pay us $8,000 for the snow removal of those fields. WE DID IT IN 5 HOURS and then scrimmaged 9 Innings.
Now we’re getting that windscreen to cover the outfield fence to give our stadium a more enclosed and intimate feel. We are installing awesome logos on it as well which will be a huge recruiting sell. There is no doubt in my mind that our next big project has to be to get Field Turf on our entire playing surface. We still have 2 feet of snow on the outfield grass, but the infield turf is totally clear.
Thanks again guys and Go Terps!
Sincerely,
Erik
Erik Bakich
Head Baseball Coach
University of Maryland
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Terps baseball beats blizzard [DC Sports Bog]
