According to the Minnesota DNR, the river’s observed water level hit 30.9 feet on Sunday, inching close to the record level of 32.89 feet that was set in September 2010. The water level hit 32.81 feet in July 2018.

Days after the high school’s baseball team celebrated a state championship, the high water levels left the ballpark under water again, something Springfield head baseball coach Brandon Wilhelmi said is an all-too common problem.

“Before the day that we left [for state baseball on Friday], we had BP [batting practice] at 3 o’clock and 1 o’clock we got the message that we needed to get stuff out of the ballpark,” Wilhelmi said. “So there were a bunch of volunteers down there at 1 o’clock … quite a few baseball players and myself were down there 1 o’clock all the way until 3 o’clock until we hit the gym that day. Something you’re dealing with, too, before trying to win a state championship, things you can’t control. … It takes a community to get ready for and recover from, unfortunately this is something that we go through too often.”

The golf course, which posted a drone video on its Facebook page Sunday showing the flooding at the course, saw Holes 1, 2 and 9 completely under water. Springfield Golf Course Superintendent Jeff Kretsch said six greens at the course were elevated on September 15, 2020, to avoid flooding issues.

Photo by Isaak Lothert a closer view of the baseball field’s elevated plaza, concession stand and bathrooms.

“Those six news greens were strategically placed so they would not be in harms way when we had flooding,” he said. “So when I say they shouldn’t be in harms way, unfortunately they’re still affected by the flooding, but the idea was they would be out of the water when the flood waters would come, the major flood waters. Minor flooding we can coexist with that because of the other renovations that we did.”

But approaching the 32-foot river crest marker, which is what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deems major flooding for the Cottonwood in Springfield, the weekend and start of the week has been challenging for the course.

“We’re up to close to 31 on this particular event, we just can’t win because basically those greens are surrounded by water and we can’t even get to them,” Kretsch said. “You can’t get down the road, you can’t get across the bridge, so we have lots of challenges with major flooding.”

Kretsch said he hasn’t been able to get in and look at the damages at the club house yet, but he said even one inch of water in the club house is too much. While the water levels in Springfield dropped about 4 inches on Monday, Kretsch hopes to see the river continue to go down quicker over the next few days.

“The water can’t leave fast enough and the danger is at this time of year when you get 90-degree temperatures and you have shallow water, it can burn things in a hurry,” Kretsch said. “So the forecast is actually in our favor because I think today [Monday] is the only real hot day and it’ll be cooler and such, so hopefully we start seeing this water go down on a more-accelerated rate than what it is right now because we’re just barely past crest right now. When you have spring floods, they’re much easier to deal with than when you have summer floods. Summer floods are just dirty, nasty water, that bring lots of problems.”

Photo courtesy of Isaak Lothert An aerial view of Springfield Golf Course taken over the weekend by Isaak Lothert show some of the flooding at the course, which has impacted Holes 1, 2 and 9, along with the club house.

The good news for the course, however, is that seven greens are accessible and Kretsch is hoping to open the course for Holes 2-8 Tuesday. For more information, follow Springfield Golf Course on Facebook.

Wilhelmi said he thinks reservoirs would be a help for Springfield and several cities along the river and hopes something can be done soon to curb flooding problems.

“It seems like something should have been done a long time ago to control it coming downstream,” Wilhelmi said. “I don’t know what it takes to get that done, but we’ve got to start doing something because every year — we got a lot of rain, 15 inches in the area and that’s not something anyone can control, but at the same point, Marshall has a river running through it and they’re not flooded the way we are.”

Riverside Park was left inoperable for the year after July’s flooding in 2018.

“2018, all the water sat on [the field] for a while, so it was just mud,” Wilhelmi said. “We had to re-sod the infield, we reseeded all the practice football field, which in behind our baseball field, and we hydroseeded the outfield. But we couldn’t play football [at Riverside] in the fall, so we played at Sticker Field in 2018.”

The Springfield Tigers amateur baseball team will take on Essig at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Sleepy Eye, with Springfield being the home team. This coming Sunday’s game originally to be played in Springfield between the Tigers and St. James, will now also take place at 5 p.m. in Sleepy Eye.