Murray Wood: Who's hot... and who's not
Every Friday, Murray Wood takes a look back at the week's news and decides who's hot... and who's not. This week's list ...
The waiting game has been long for Baseball Saskatoon and executive director Jesse Korte ahead of their opening week of games for the 2026 outdoor season.
Wind, snow and moisture this spring has been the enemy of the group which co-ordinates youth baseball in the city, with several snowstorms over March and April making it difficult to dry out their diamonds.
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“Everybody is itching to get outside and play baseball,” Korte said. “Because of the weather, everybody was forced to go inside and practice.”
It has been a race against the clock for Baseball Saskatoon and other minor sports organizations around the city this week, with hundreds of young athletes scheduled to begin their seasons.
“We’re crunched for time here,” Korte said.
“We’re just getting everything ready at each park that we play it. It’s been a scramble this week to try to get everything going and ready for this weekend.”
Baseball Saskatoon was forced to cancel exhibition games in their 15U division last weekend with snow still blanketing several community diamonds.
On Friday, Korte estimated the organization would have use of at least nine diamonds around Saskatoon for different age groups to play on.
However, they made the decision to cancel two games on Friday night, with potentially more cancellations pending heading into their first weekend of the outdoor season.
“There’s a few diamonds that won’t be ready,” Korte said. “The city doesn’t have them quite ready to go yet.”
According to Korte, most of the cancellations or postponements are being made in the 11U and 13U age groups.
One bright spot for Baseball Saskatoon is their turfed diamonds at Nutana Kiwanis Park which will allow for game play in the Saskatchewan Premier Baseball League at the 15U AAA division.
“We just shuffled some things around,” Korte said. “We had to cancel some stuff, but most of it we think is going to be able to stay on track with a few games here and there.”
Saskatoon Youth Soccer has been another organization paying close attention to the forecast with their outdoor season quickly creeping up on Monday.
With temperatures into the double-digits over the past three days, executive director Amanda Probe has been pleased with the progress of their soccer pitches.
“The fields have definitely dried up quite a bit,” Probe said. “Our field liner is out setting up half-fields today and we’ll be lining fields through the weekend. The city crews are starting lining on Monday.”
Around 75 outdoor games were expected to start April 24, but had to be moved to later in the season due to the late snowfall.
Probe said the fields have been progressing well this week to the point where they expect to be ready for matches following the weekend.
“It’s a huge relief to know that the city grass fields are scheduled to be on time for Monday,” Probe said.
“It would have impacted a lot of games had we been notified of any type of delay for the next week.”
Along with people staying off the fields while they dry out, Probe added not having outdoor games planned this weekend is a huge boost towards shooting for the Monday season opener.
While line marking is already underway for their older levels, Probe is also asking for patience while they work through the rest of their fields down to their pint-sized players.
“We will have a lot of fields for the mini-ages with no lines,” Probe said.
“They have a heads up on that. They’ll have to play with some cones for marking out their fields for the first week.”
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