After battling fog on Friday night and rain all day Saturday, Hixson baseball coach Brian Bray finally threw in a soggy towel Saturday afternoon.
But he’ll try again with the Wildcats’ Outback Classic this afternoon, playing games at Hixson and Central high schools. The championship round at Hixson will begin at 12:30 and two consolation games will start at 1 at Central. The championship game is scheduled for 5:15.
Bray had his Hixson players at the field at 7:45 Saturday morning to take the tarp off the infield. It was more to get water off because they immediately put it back on and strapped it down in anticipation of more rain. They returned during a break in the weather early Saturday afternoon and repeated the task.
The Hixson coach backed up the tournament three times before the late-afternoon round of storms washed way all chances of playing.
“The infield was OK, but the outfield is just treacherous,” Bray said. “It’s still raining, and it looks like there is another wave coming and another wave behind that.”
The first semifinal matches Notre Dame and Red Bank, and the second will be the host Wildcats against Soddy-Daisy. Hixson was supposed to play Soddy-Daisy on Friday, but that game was delayed and then postponed because of thick fog that Bray said was about eight feet off the ground.
Red Bank and Notre Dame each is 2-0 in the tournament, and Hixson and Soddy-Daisy each is 1-0.
“I really wanted to keep district opponents from playing in the semifinal games,” Bray said. “If this thing had been played out and district opponents met in the semifinal, then fine.”
Hixson and Notre Dame are in District 6-AA, Red Bank and Soddy-Daisy in 6-AAA.
The semifinal games will be under a two-hour time limit.
“The county schools are on spring break, but we and Notre Dame have district games on Monday,” Bray said.
Ward Gossett is an assistant sports editor and writer for the Times Free Press. Ward has a long history in Chattanooga journalism. He actually wrote a bylined story for the Chattanooga News-Free Press as a third-grader. He Began working part-time there in 1968 and was hired full time in 1970. Ward now covers high school athletics, primarily football, wrestling and baseball and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga wrestling. Over a 40-year career, he has covered ...
