Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

 Cathedral head coach Craig Beesley said in his 27 years of coaching baseball he has never before seen a pandemic, and a winter storm interrupt baseball season like it has. 

He said as much as he would like to be playing baseball on Friday, he is praying the residents of the Miss-Lou area and others impacted by the storm will be safe.

He said it has been at least 10 days since Cathedral took the field in a 10-4 win over Amite School Center. Currently their game against Loyd Star has been pushed back to Saturday. Beasley said he doesn’t think they will be able to get the game in, but he is holding out hope.

Beesley said he isn’t able to hold practice due to the weather. His young team is having to stay at home, which harms their development in hitting and pitching. He said hitters need to face live pitching which they have not been able to do because of COVID and this winter storm. 

“Your hitters always struggle early in the year, because they haven’t faced a lot of pitching,” Beesley said. “I feel like our hitters will be a little behind, but hopefully our pitchers can find somewhere to throw.” 

Players are able to workout at home, Beesley said, but without coaches there to make sure they do workout there is not a whole lot he can do.Beesley said he has a young team who has not been able to play for almost a year until their first game this season.

He said the Green Wave’s Sam Mosby, Hollis Lees and Cade Eidt are the team’s three senior leaders. Beasley said these three players are the most experienced on the team, and he has coached Mosby and Lees since they were in ninth grade. 

All three players got to play their freshman and sophomore season, but he said the younger players on the team lost a year of development because of COVID. Beesley said their experience and senior leadership will be needed this season. 

Cathedral will face challenges of youth, and a winter storm interrupting the start of their season, but there is another obstacle the team will have to face. Beesley said once the weather clears up this weekend there will be muddy field conditions to contend with which could make the field unplayable. 

“What worries me is once all of this ice and snow melts it will probably saturate the field,” Beesley said. “It might look nice outside but the field is going to be saturated by water with all of the melting ice. I have a feeling the amount of moisture in the ground is going to have a hard time drying out.”