The rainy weather that has wreaked havoc in Georgia over the last week has also caused the high school softball season to come to standstill.

Teams from around the area have not only been forced to cancel games, but practices as well.

“We haven’t practiced on our field for what seems like about two weeks,” said West Hall softball coach Warren Sellers, whose team’s game against Region 7-AAA foe Gilmer was cancelled Tuesday. “We’ve been able to hit inside and our pitchers have been able to pitch some, but we aren’t taking ground balls nor can we work on our relays and things like that — (this weather) is really going to affect our timing.”

The Lady Spartans are one of many teams in the same boat: facing preseason problems close to what should be the end of the regular season.

“It’s been so long since we’ve gotten to play that I don’t know how the girls are going to react,” Sellers said. “It’s just like the preseason in that you can practice, but you don’t know how things are until you get a game under your belt.”

Sellers also added that his team was one of the lucky ones in that their bye-date was last week so they only have two region games to make up.

“It’s also nice because we have a tournament coming up this weekend in Alpharetta so we’ll get a lot of games in and trust me, we need it,” he added.

Since Monday, 12 area games have been postponed and because each of them were region contests, the games will have to be made up.

That fact poses its own set of problems as the regular season for Region 7-AAA alone is slated to end Sept. 29 with the region tournament beginning Oct. 5.

In order for seeding for the region tournaments to be complete, the teams have to play each other, and with most teams playing in various tournaments — including the North Fall Classic which was rescheduled from last weekend to this weekend — time isn’t on the side of rescheduling.

“We’re supposed to play in the North Fall Classic this weekend,” said Lumpkin County coach Lori Hall whose region games against Chestatee (Sept. 17) East Hall (Tuesday) were cancelled. “But if it’s cancelled, we’ll possibly reschedule one of the games we missed for Friday. Other than that I don’t know how we’re going to do it.”

According to Sellers, the worst-case scenario is playing the week leading up to the region tournament and one other thing: doubleheaders.

“You don’t want to have to do things like that to your team, but having two teams at one site and each of them playing the other is one way to do it,” Sellers said. “The thing about it, though, is that scheduling like that is going to stress your pitching and teams without a deep pitching staff are going to struggle and nobody wants to be struggling heading into the region tournament.”