Parks Department Considers 7 P.M. Start Times For Youth Baseball To Dodge Peak Heat Hours

WAUKESHA — The Waukesha Parks Department is evaluating an emergency shift of all youth baseball and soccer practice times from the traditional 6 p.m. slot to 7 p.m. or later, a change that would give the afternoon heat index roughly one additional hour to retreat before nine-year-olds are asked to stand in a field and catch things.

Parks director Jim Patterson told the Common Council Tuesday night that the department has logged four heat-related medical calls this week alone during youth sports activities at city fields, a figure he described as "not one we're comfortable repeating." Patterson said the calls ranged from a Waukesha American Little League assistant coach who required an ice pack and twenty minutes in the shade at Frame Park to a 10-year-old outfielder at Horeb Springs Park who was walked to the concession stand and given a full cup of ice, no beverage, "just the ice," per the department's incident log.

"We can't ask nine-year-olds to play in 103-degree heat index," Patterson said. "I don't care how good the kid's swing is."

The Math Of Nine Fields And One Hour

The proposal, as Patterson described it, is straightforward in concept and considerably less so in execution. Pushing every 6 p.m. practice and game to 7 p.m. or later does not create new field time, it relocates the existing field time into a narrower window before dark, which this time of year gives the department until roughly 8:45 p.m. before umpires start calling games on visibility rather than merit. Patterson said the department's nine lighted fields can currently accommodate the demand at 6 p.m.; compressed into a 7 p.m. start, he estimated three of the nine leagues that use city fields would need to shift to a rotating schedule, playing every other day rather than nightly.

Youth coaches reached this week were split on whether the later window solves more than it creates. Terry Loch, who coaches a 9-and-under team through Waukesha American Little League, said he supported the change "without reservation" and noted that his team's 6 p.m. practices this week had opened with three players already visibly overheated before the first ground ball was hit. "I'd rather explain to a parent why practice ran until 8:15 than explain why we called an ambulance," Loch said.

"We can't ask nine-year-olds to play in 103-degree heat index. I don't care how good the kid's swing is."

— Jim Patterson, Waukesha Parks Department director

Not every coach was on board. Denise Kowalski, who coaches a 12-and-under softball team that currently practices at 6 p.m. on the field adjacent to Loch's, said a 7 p.m. start pushes her practices past 8:30, cutting directly into what she called "the window," the roughly 40 minutes between practice ending and a reasonable kid bedtime during which a family is supposed to manage dinner, showers, and any homework a July schedule still requires. "Nobody's eating a real meal at 8:45," Kowalski said. "We're going to have a whole division subsisting on Culver's drive-through eaten in the car."

Field Availability, Revisited

Councilman Gary Puchalski, who chairs the council's parks and recreation committee, said the city is also examining whether additional field lighting could be installed at Cutler Park to absorb some of the displaced 6 p.m. leagues, though he cautioned that any lighting expansion would require its own budget review and was "not a this-week fix for a this-week problem." Bob Krueger, the retired city Department of Public Works supervisor who has become something of an informal authority on city infrastructure matters, said he was consulted informally on the irrigation implications of a later schedule and confirmed that the fields' sprinkler cycles, which currently run at 9 p.m., would need to be pushed to accommodate games running past 8:45. "You do not want a wet infield at first pitch," Krueger said. "That's how you get a kid explaining a bad hop to his mother for a week."

Patterson told the council he expects to have a revised schedule ready for the department's nine affected leagues by early next week, contingent on how many coaches respond to a survey the department sent out Wednesday asking, among other things, whether families would accept a rotating every-other-day format in exchange for the later, cooler start. As of Thursday afternoon, Patterson said 61 of the department's roughly 140 coaches had responded, with the returns "leaning yes, but not by the margin I was hoping for."

Asked what happens if the heat advisory lifts before a final decision is made, Patterson said the department intends to implement the change regardless, calling this week "a preview of what August is going to look like whether we're ready or not."