The Front Row with MARK NELKE May 17, 2012

With apologies to Barry Manilow, it looks like we made it.

No, not in the way he was singing about — look up the words to see what I mean — but looks like we made it through a spring that looked bleak only a couple of weeks ago.

Rain after rain after rain — with the occasional snow mixed in — turned normally busy high school sports days into a mad scramble trying to find out what events were still on, what events were being postponed, what events were being rescheduled, what events just weren’t going to get made up.

One baseball game was rained out four different times before administrators got the game in by tacking it onto another scheduled game between the two teams for a doubleheader — take that, baseball gods!

The Christina Finney Relays at Post Falls in late March was rained out — again — but at least they were able to find room to make it up in between rain showers in April. In recent years, the meet has seemingly been postponed by rain more often than it has come off on its originally scheduled date.

But at least they were able to make up the Finney meet, which has been held since 1993. The Inland Empire League track championships were rained out and they were unable to make it up.

And finally, the sun has made its appearance the past couple of weeks.

STATE TRACK moves away from Boise State for the first time in decades, never, it appears, to return to that site again.

With a new football facility being built where the throwing events have been held, and talk of taking out the track and lowering the field for additional seating, the state meets are at five different sites this Friday and Saturday — 5As at Rocky Mountain High in Meridian; 4As at Middleton High; 3As at Eagle High; 2As at Centennial High and 1As at Mountain View High in Meridian.

Gone will be the thrill of all the meets in one place — especially on Friday night, when the 4As and 5As finish up with the track finals at Bronco Stadium before as many as 10,000 fans.

Starting in 2013, the five state track meets are slated to run together again, this time at Dona Larsen Park in Boise, where the four Boise schools are scheduled to start playing their home football games, beginning this fall. However, Dona Larsen is expected to seat 5,000 to 6,000, so whether that will be enough to handle the Friday night crowd at state track, we’ll see. And parking will be limited there, too, meaning many fans will have to park elsewhere and either hoof it or ride a shuttle to the park.

So this year’s state meets might seem more like normal high school meets, perhaps lacking the drama of the big crowd in the big stadium. But, in track and other sports at any level, the top athletes find a way to overcome obstacles, perceived and real, and produce their best efforts anyway.

The only state tournament in this area this spring is the state 3A softball tournament, featuring local teams Timberlake and Priest River and scheduled for Friday and Saturday at Ramsey Park in Coeur d’Alene.

That tournament has seen its share of rain through the years — twice being cut short and a winner declared based on games they did get in. This weekend’s weather forecast looks promising, but you know how that goes.

In any event remember, the world was supposedly going to come to an end last year about this time, and we made it through that.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at CdAPressSports.