When it comes to their diamonds, coaches get serious

Imagine composing a beautiful banquet spread.

The chocolate fountain is burbling, the crab claws are cracked, the mint jelly placed just so in the porcelain ramekin.

You go to the kitchen to start the coffee, then return to find the petits fours have been dunked in the crème caramel. Horseradish, an ugly blob of it, has been plopped right onto the sauteed asparagus tips. The eggs Benedict have hardened into hockey pucks.

Back to the drawing board.

Robin Renner must feel like that. He’s among local baseball and softball coaches who in the face of challenges both universal and unique struggle to make their facilities not only playable, but pristine.

Asked what blips he encounters, the Neuqua Valley baseball coach initially drew a blank. Thirty seconds later he was rolling.

“Our main issue is other people getting on our field,” he said. “We’ll practice or play and it’ll take us 20, 30 minutes to put the field back together. We’ll come back the next day and there’ll be holes all over because somebody jumped over the fence and played on it.”

During one surveillance mission Renner came upon a man playing on the varsity field with his son. Renner pointed out the sign forbidding use of the field. The father argued he had a right to be there since he paid his taxes.

“I do too,” Renner countered, “but they don’t let me ride in the fire trucks.”

He’s also got a couple good animal stories. Pity the poor outfielder who attempts a diving catch in the early spring before the geese depart and their, uh, residue has decomposed.

From a helpful baseball parent who managed a golf course, Renner once received a material that when laid down, it keeps grass 15 to 20 degrees warmer than outside temperature. Renner draped the stuff on his diamond. When he pulled it up again he made a biological discovery.

“Moles like warm weather, too, and they had built roads,” Renner said. “It looked like somebody took little miniature lawn mowers and mowed that grass right down to the dirt.”

There’s moles and there’s voles, which look like a mouse. Ask Benet outfielder Laura Wise.

Benet softball coach Jerry Schilf takes pride, like all coaches, in offering a fine facility. He goes so far as to protect the diamond with a tarp in the fall. That’s sometimes an issue in itself, he said, “because the wind tends to treat it like a big kite.”

Schilf’s top challenges seem to be maintaining an even edge on the warning track and making sure the infield lip is smooth and doesn’t become bad-hop prominent. Those are typical problems, unlike what Wise found rearing its cute, fuzzy head.

“We had a nest of voles in right field last year,” Schilf said. “One of the girls (Wise), by hand, pulled them out one at a time. There must have been seven or eight in this nest.”

They were deposited safely outside the field of play. Sometimes that’s not too safe, either. Sometimes field maintenance includes what happens off the field.

His park positioned at an often busy intersection, Downers Grove South softball coach Ron Havelka sees an array of foul balls flying out of play onto 63rd Street. A 19-year Mustangs head coach, when Havelka first took over balls left the field of play unabated. More recently netting has been added, extending down the third base line out of play. It’s not a fail-safe method.

“It’ll stop some balls, but some of them wind up going over there. And once it’s over it’s on the street,” said Havelka, adding the field may eventually be turned around to reduce this hazard.

“With the traffic on 63rd Street, especially at five o’clock in the afternoon, that can be a problem,” he said.

In Illinois the main problem is wet weather.

Montini softball coach Richie Costante — along with an army of boosters, players, parents, assistant Marc Shipbaugh and former head coach Mike Bukovsky, who Costante calls the “director of softball operations” — have just now gotten their heads above water after last summer’s heavy rains.

“Mainly, a quarter of our infield was washed away,” said Costante, who also described a trench 10 inches wide and 2 feet deep that extended from the area around shortstop to first base. He said the ground near the foul line around first base “collapsed” into a detention pond.

Costante credited boosters and the school itself who sprung for more infield dirt, plus efforts of people like the Broncos themselves, who raked the field by hand. Everything was fine until it rained before spring break when it was discovered the new dirt blend did not also include a drying agent.

“You need a little artificial help” around here, said Costante, who has attended clinics on field maintenance.

He mentioned two goals for his varsity program. First, win conference. Second, “have the nicest field.”

A variety of quirks make that a challenge that area coaches fight to overcome.

“My thing,” Costante said, “is I want the field to look nice because the girls deserve it.”

Finishing strong

On March 17 we wrote of Benet graduate Nick Garvy, a senior swimmer at Duke. He ended his collegiate swimming career at the NCAA Division I Swimming and Diving Championships at the University of Minnesota the weekend of March 24-26.

Garvy finished on March 25 by breaking his own school record in the 100 butterfly. The 22-year-old from Naperville clocked a time of 46.85 seconds, re-establishing his own record of 46.94 set March 25 at the Atlantic Coast Conference championships.

Found in translation

An Internet translation program is essential when trying to find out what Naperville North 2005 graduate Kyle Gramit is doing on the volleyball court in Sweden. Even then it’s somewhat difficult.

In any language the right side hitter is helping lead his team, Falkenberg Volleybollklubb, in the finals of Sweden’s top tournament, the Svenska Mästare. On Saturday Falkenberg took a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five series finals against favored Sollentuna, Falkenberg scoring its last two points (if we’re reading this correctly) on Gramit blocks. The next match was slated for Wednesday in Stockholm.

“Points is best, that’s right,” the translated web account exclaimed of the 25-22 victory to end the Saturday match. “Kyle Gramit a full 10 points...”

This is the second year Gramit has gone overseas to play volleyball. Earning a sports management degree at George Mason, where he finished as that program’s all-time leader in aces, second in kills, third in digs and fourth in blocks (all per game), Gramit played in Switzerland last year. Returning home in March 2010, he volunteered as an assistant boys coach at Naperville Central.

This year with Falkenberg, which lies on Sweden’s southwest coast, Gramit helped the club to a 13-5 regular season record and tournament titles in the Swedish Cup and the prestigious Grand Prix. In league play Gramit was second in both points and attack points, tied for seventh in aces and 18th in blocking.

Emotions are high in the finals against Sollentuna, the Falkenberg account states.

Precis som det ska vara!

Just as they should be!

Reminder

Coming off its recent scrimmage in Rock Island, Western Illinois University’s football team is holding another spring scrimmage at Naperville North’s Harshbarger-Welzel Stadium at 2 p.m. Saturday.

Waubonsie Valley’s Dwight Harris, Neuqua Valley’s Alie Walker and Glenbard East’s Jason Callahan are among the Leathernecks who could see gridiron time at this free event.

doberhelman@dailyherald.com