They played in and through the rain Thursday but at least they were playing, which has been a rare occasion for areahigh school baseball teams since the start of preseason six weeks ago.
"This is the craziest weather. I've never seen anything like it. Even the storm of '94 wasn't anything like we've seen (this year)," Signal Mountain coach Josh Gandy said after his Eagles pulled out a 10-7 win over visiting South Pittsburg.
"Any day you can come out and put on the spikes and go at it is a good day," observed Brian Paris, South Pittsburg's first-year coach.
While fans scrambled for and then kept their umbrellas popped open much of the game, they also were huddling for warmth as the temperature plummeted 15 degrees from the 5 p.m. start to the 7:15 finish.
From an early seesaw affair when the lead was swapped three times, Signal Mountain took control in the bottom of the fourth inning when the Eagles batted around and plated seven runs. They got only two hits but were able to mix in the singles by Chris Feemster and Walter Gailmard with four walks and a pair of South Pittsburg errors. Feemster picked up two RBIs on his second hit of the day.
"Even when we got behind, the guys didn't get rattled," Gandy said after his Eagles moved above .500 to 6-5. "Our emphasis to the guys all year has been when we're at the plate, make them throw you out. That's where we're trying to get, and I thought we did a pretty good job today.
"We took advantage -- forced the issue in a couple of places -- but that's high school baseball, and we've been on both sides of that."
Because of the weather, much of Gandy's coaching has been done on the field during games rather than in practice, but it's been that way for most teams, including South Pittsburg, which entered the day with eight wins in 10 games.
The Pirates had their chances, banging out 12 hits, but they stranded a lot of potential runs.
"We're still working to get better at getting runners in," Paris said. "I told the guys after the game that we let them control the game. That's what we want to do. We also want to keep fighting every day to get better, and the guys showed some fight today."
Signal's fourth-inning spree was just too much to overcome.
"They made us pay for the mistakes we made, and they executed on defense and we didn't," Paris said.
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfreepress.com or 423-886-4765. Follow him at Twitter.com/wardgossett.