Is there no end to this weather madness?
Published: April 14, 2012
Yet another weekend, yet more rain. Can't get a break even during the Easter break.
Saturday’s Kanto Plain Association of Secondary Schools track and field meet and Zama American vs. American School In Japan baseball doubleheader at Fuchu Civic Stadium were each postponed, thanks to a sixth rainy weekend out of the last seven.
Only Saturday’s U.S. Forces Japan-American Football League preseason game managed to get played, an 8-0 Yokota Warriors victory at the Yokosuka Seahawks, a game truncated to three quarters and played with a running clock in the last two periods.
It just feels as if the weather is playing us. Weekend after weekend, Ma Nature keeps throwing us haymakers. In the Yokota-Yokosuka game’s case, it was played in that stiff breeze that blows, spindrift-like, off the northeast quadrant of Berkey Field. Temperature was 52 degrees, but real-feel was more like 42, and rain and sleet blew in ceaselessly.
And it’s not Japan alone feeling Ma Nature’s wrath. Anybody catch that wild thunder and lightning storm (or series thereof) Friday on Okinawa? It. Was. Crazy. Somehow, some way, Kubasaki’s boys soccer team managed to get in one half against Mil United (match ended 2-2) before play was called.
Fortunately, the weather cleared off in time for the 8th Okinawa-American Friendship Baseball Tournament at Urasoe Stadium to begin; Kubasaki led things off by mercy-ruling Urasoe’s Swallows 11-4 in the opener.
At Osaka, where the weather was somewhat civil, Matthew C. Perry’s boys soccer team won the inaugural Association of International Schools in Asia tournament at Senri-Osaka International School.
The Samurai won 2-1 in overtime and avenged a Friday loss to Yokohama International, and the winner game on my favorite play in soccer, the Golden Goal. It was netted by Samurai senior striker Tyelor Apple, who finished the weekend with 46 goals in open-field, 11-on-11 situations.
That puts him within two goals of the DODDS Pacific mark of 48 set in 2001 by Zama American’s Jimmy Flatley, and within 15 of the Pacific’s overall record of 61 set in 2008 by Seoul Foreign’s Remco Rademaker.
Yes, I have peeked ahead at the long-range weather projections for April 20-21. Yes, the forecasts call for rain. Again.
