weather

I'm going to say that the main defining reason for teams from the ME, NE, not doing well at nationals is that the weather here sucks. Look at the weather for West Penn sectionals this weekend - low of 31 degrees F and rain/snow showers. That is horrendous.

The weather at Spring Phling that we (PSU) hosted last weekend was the first time in my three years that it hasn't been cold and rainy or worse. My first year it was terrible, we got suspended and didn't have it the next year, and again last year we cancelled play after 1 round on Sunday. Even this year we had to use backup fields.

We can't practice outdoors in this weather at all. The school won't give us fields and it would be miserable anyway. We have a total of two weeks of outdoor practice before sectionals. Any school from warm climes (Florida, Georgia, Texas, NC, California) has the great advantage of being to practice outdoors all year round. When people discuss why those teams are good, I think they underestimate how useful it is to play outdoors all the time.

When I studied abroad in tropical Australia, being able to throw around outside year round was one of the main reasons for my skills improving drastically.

Of course, this doesn't fully explain some anomalies like Wisconsin which has terrible winters. But maybe their school likes them and gives them plenty of indoor practice time in the winter, rather than 2 hours a week in a basketball gym.

Ironic that a farmer would talk about weather, hey?