Trending
Panama Central School will join the shared Clymer-Sherman modified girls softball team for at least one year -- and possibly well into the future.
Panama school board members discussed the shared team last week. Clymer, Sherman and Panama already share a modified and varsity boys baseball team, but Panama has been able to field its own varsity girls softball team. Panama has not offered its own modified program, with girls who would ordinarily on a modified or junior varsity team playing varsity softball instead.
"I don't think it would be that difficult to do," said Bert Lictus, district superintendent. "That is how we started with baseball. That's how we started to share football -- we started with the not the varsitiy program, but the one below. In this case, modified."
The unique circumstance of the 2020-21 school year's late-starting spring sports season makes this a good time to try modified softball, Lictus said. New York state moved the football season to the spring -- practice for football begins Monday.
The softball season won't start until May 3, with practices starting in mid-April, which gives the district time to put the pieces in place with Clymer and Sherman.
"I would like to give it whirl for a year," Lictus said. "If it isn't going to work then we'll know. And if we don't have this crazy spring next year we'll know. I think it would be a good time to try it."
Lictus said there won't be much investment in start-up costs while there could be a lot of benefit for the school's seventh, eighth and ninth grade girls. Many of the girls who would end up playing on the varsity team aren't ready physically to play varsity softball, Lictus said, and because they aren't physically ready to play varsity games they don't end up playing enough to improve. That makes it difficult for the varsity program to be competitive in future years.
Playing modified instead of junior varsity opens the team up to more girls as well. Lictus also shared with the board the example of the school's junior varsity baseball team, which ended up being dropped when interest waned.
"We tried it years ago with JV baseball," he said. "You get a group that wants to play and in two years, we had to drop it because that group was playing varsity and there weren't enough younger ones. The sharing eliminates a lot of that problem. Every year one of the schools has a bubble of kids and its eliminated that inconsistent play that you sometimes get."
While a districtwide merger did not go over well with voters, Clymer, Sherman and Panama have had success sharing sports teams in the past, including winning state football championships together. Lictus said Panama doesn't need to a shared varsity softball team yet, but that day is likely coming.
"There is going to become a point in time where it's probably going to be something we need to do in order to have a competitive team," Lictus said.