With the spring sports season on hold due to the COVID-19 virus, area high school baseball players are forced to find different ways to practice and get their workouts in.

Usually at this time, the spring season is still on hold due to the weather. Snow and rain has pushed back many games in the past, but this year it’s different. For the first time in a while, the weather isn’t the problem. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to shut down life as we know it and sports is obviously affected.

Area athletes are forced to work out alone, and that can be challenging at times. Even simple things like playing catch and hitting in the cage has been disrupted this year to an extent.

Springfield’s Decker Scheffler and New Ulm Cathedral’s Chris Knowles are not only trying to get ready for the upcoming high school season, but they’re also working on getting ready for the college game also. Scheffler is attending Division I Ball State next year while Knowles is heading to Gustavus Adolphus College. Nick Labat of Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s, another longtime area standout, won’t be playing college ball so this year is big for him.

As for now, everyone is distancing themselves from others and trying to get out and hit and stay in shape.

“I’m trying to get down to the field whenever I can, just trying to figure out whenever other people are going so I can vary it by when they’re going, just go on my own and stuff,” Scheffler said. “I’ve been working out in my house every day and other than that, just some homework and some video games.”

Scheffler has his own cage he can use, which helps.

“I have a batting cage in my grandpa’s shop, it’s about two miles away,” Scheffler said. “Otherwise I’ll go into town, they put the cage up at the field and it’s nice to be able to hit in there and you can just go in the outfield and play some catch and run. If I’m going to various stuff, I’ll go to town but if I’m going to hit, I’ll just going to mine.”

As far as playing catch, he’ll play with his brother Cooper or his dad Mike or he’ll find a friend.

It’s been a tough year for the Springfield senior class since late March. There, the Tigers qualified for the Section 2A boys’ basketball championship game against New Ulm Cathedral, but the game was canceled due to the virus outbreak.

The Tigers boast a talented senior class with a lot of varsity experience in football, basketball and baseball and this isn’t the way they wanted it to go in their final season.

“Even if it’s limited, we all want to get that last spring of high school sports in,” Scheffler said. “The way basketball ended, it was obviously very unfortunate for us and our senior class. We’ve been working together for so long, we would’ve liked that chance with Cathedral again, but there’s nothing we can do about it. Hopefully, people are doing what they can to limit this so it slows down as fast as possible and hopefully we can get back out on the diamond and play some baseball.”

Labat was supposed to begin his senior baseball season earlier this week.

“We were supposed to have our first game [on Thursday], it’s kind of too bad that we couldn’t have it,” Labat said. “Meanwhile, I’m still going to the cage, I’m going alone and we made a self-feeder for one of the pitching machines. We can go out there individually and hit and I’m playing catch with my sisters.”

For Labat, reality is setting in as the season marches on.

“Yeah it’s kind of setting in right now that we might not have our senior baseball season right now, which is too bad,” Labat said. “Going back to basketball, you feel bad for the seniors because their season got cut short, too.”

As for Knowles, he has been staying as busy as possible, working out with his brothers Gabe and Sam.

“It’s obviously kind of difficult, but we have a weight room set up in our garage and I’ve been lifting weights every day, playing catch every day,” Knowles said. “Doing ground balls in the back yard with my two brothers, I’ve been down to North Park a few times, done some B.P. [batting practice] there and some live pitching there. Pretty much everything I can do to stay in baseball shape.”

Like all seniors, he’s beginning to get frustrated.

“It’s extremely frustrating, because it’s senior year and you never want to get any bit of that taken away, especially when it’s out of your control,” Knowles said. “You just gotta have a positive attitude and stay on your feet, stay ready.”

“It’s definitely a hard pill to swallow, especially when the season ends and it’s not a win or a loss or anything, you can’t decide who won that game so that makes it really tough,” Knowles said. “With baseball too, it’s hard to imagine not being able to play, predicting this. If I heard this, I would’ve assumed you’re joking. But it obviously shows that we have no control over what’s happening.”

All three are optimistic still. There’s hope that the season can begin later and there are still options to play this summer, either with legion baseball or amateur baseball.

“I’m really staying hopeful right now, I’m hoping that even if it get pushed back to June or July, we still get to play our season,” Labat said.

“If spring ball does get canceled, hopefully it’s gone by summer,” Scheffler said. “There’s many opportunities to play in summer too, that’s the nice thing about baseball, you get more than just the one season during the school year, you get the summer too. Hopefully it doesn’t last that long.”