Nothing is more frustrating to a baseball or softball coach than turning on the Weather Channel and finding out its supposed to rain on the day of your game.

There are a certain amount of games you have to play and only a certain amount of days to play them in.

Unfortunately, that is what many coaches have dealt with this spring, as wet weather has wreaked havoc with baseball and softball schedules across the area.

We’re nearing the final couple of weeks of baseball season, but you wouldn’t know by looking at the records of some of the area teams.

Cathedral has played only 11 games this year, with only four of those being non-district games.

Vidalia is in almost as bad of shape. The Vikings have played 14 games so far, while Trinity has also played 14 games.

This week was especially bad.

Thanks to storms during the later part of the week, almost all games on Thursday, Friday and Saturday were either canceled or postponed.

The only exception was Trinity was somehow able to play a doubleheader against River Oaks after moving its game time up four hours Friday afternoon to beat the weather.

Rainouts can take their toll on the school in several different ways.

On one hand, it can hurt their competativeness.

Cathedral has been dying to play a game against a decent opponent since the season started.

The Green Wave play in a weak district, and they are head and shoulders above almost every other team.

For that reason, they need to play non-district games against strong teams to get them ready for the playoffs.

They were supposed to play some tough teams in Vidalia’s Catfish Classic a few weeks ago, but that entire tournament was rained out.

A game against a strong North Pike team was also canceled a few days later.

And the latest blow was a game against rival St. Aloysius was canceled Saturday because of the wet field conditions following Friday’s storm.

Rainout can also hurt the amount of money that comes into a program.

Vidalia coach Johnny Lee Hoffpauir is rueing the fact that the Vikings have lost five home games due to rainouts this season.

That means five times, fans didn’t have to purchase a ticket to see the game and didn’t visit the concession stand to get a soft drink, hamburger or nachos.

All of that adds up, and it can cost the team quite a bit of money.

So with only a few weeks to go before the playoffs, I’m sure coaches will be turning on their TV to the Weather Channel or checking the newspaper’s weather page to see if they’ll be able to play their games that day.

Hopefully, Mother Nature will decide that we’ve had enough rain to last awhile and let us play a little baseball.

Jeff Edwards is the sports editor for The Democrat. He can be reached at sports@natchezdemocrat.com.