Steve Christilaw: Prep athletes persevere in precipitation

You know the dreary weather has piled up over too many days when you let your dog out to do her business and she gives you a dirty look when she sees that the skies are dumping yet another day’s worth of water on the landscape.

“You now this is redundant, right?” she seemed to say.

Yeah. I know.

I asked a tennis coach about his grip the other day and he began talking about how to hold a squeegee.

The dog gets a little prissy some days, but she’s right. Mother Nature has definitely gone overboard with the precip, and getting sent outside to tinkle in the sprinkle is just a bad, bad rhyme.

Yes, yes, I know. April showers and all that. The ball fields are greening up nicely thanks to all that moisture. But is it the grass getting greener or is there a green mold forming?

So far this spring I’ve worn out two sets of windshield wipers and my clothes feel like they’re permanently damp. I’ve been so cold and damp that when they ask me how I’d like my coffee, I now tell them “Intravenous.”

We persevere in the Greater Spokane area when it comes to spring sports.

We all remember worse weather we’ve had to slog through. There was the year when the last snowstorm of the season left such piles of drifting snow on the Freeman baseball field that the Scotties weren’t able to practice on their own field until the last week of the season.

Rainy days are tougher on some sports than on others.

Baseball and softball find ways to slog through and soccer always seems to revel in inclement weather. And track and field does its best to ignore the wet and the cold, but you have to feel for kids who are thinly clad to begin with become thinly clad and wet. Can there be anything more miserable than high jumping or pole vaulting into a pit that boasts standing water?

Rain is kryptonite to tennis, and you just know that, if the weather ever does break, there will be matches squeezed in at every opportunity.

So, in an effort to be of service until the permanent rain delay ends, I’ve put together a Top 10 playlist to fit the overall mood.

10. The B.J. Thomas’s hit, “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head.” Because nothing reminds you of the situation more than hearing about it in song.

9. Brooks Benton’s “Rainy Night in Georgia” fits the mood, but the lyrics could just as easily be changed to “Rainy Afternoon in Millwood.”

8. No playlist would be possible without including The Carpenters’ “Rainy Days and Mondays.” Because the rainy days are getting us ALL down.

7. James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.” Because I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain and between the two, a nice bonfire sounds much, much better.

6. Whether you like the John Fogerty solo version or the classic Creedence Clearwater Revival version, “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” is integral to this playlist.

5. And while we’re at it, we might as well throw in the same group’s “Who’ll Stop The Rain?” The version from the 1993 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction where Fogerty sings this song with Springsteen.

4. This one fits the weather pattern perfectly: The Eurythmics’ “Here Comes the Rain Again.”

3. Joe Cocker’s “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today.” For the same reason.

2. Here’s a call and response pairing: New Edition’s “Can You Stand the Rain?”

and 1. Ann Peebles classic “I Can’t Stand the Rain.”

But here’s a secret: The kids can teach us all a lesson in how to deal with the dreary.

They can’t control it, so they just ignore it. Wear a raincoat. Take an extra towel and your weather-proof warm-ups and just get after it. Pay extra attention to getting yourself loose and stretched out when it’s cold out.

It’s raining on everyone equally, so don’t take it personally.

And as they show us on the nightly weather report, it could be worse. And it always seems to be worse somewhere else.