The rain that has forced baseball game postponements all over the area through the first three days of this week, has forced Howard County officials to reschedule all the games scheduled for Wednesday to be played Saturday.

"Baseball and tennis are the hardest hit by the rain," said River Hill athletic and activities director Rick Lloyd, who says the county tennis teams are so backed up his Hawks are playing twice Saturday at Long Reach (10 a.m.) and at Atholton (1 p.m.). "You can't play tennis on a wet court and the rain turns the baseball field to mud. You can't have kids throwing projectiles that can't be gripped at one another."

In Howard County, schools are running out of days to reschedule. The teams there are already playing four games a week (the maximum allowed in one week), making up previous rainouts.

Saturday, Reservoir at Oakland Mills, Glenelg at Wilde Lake, Marriotts Ridge at Hammond, Mount Hebron at Centennial and Atholton at Howard will all be played at 10 a.m., while River Hill's varsity will play at Long Reach at noon.

While Saturday seems like a good day for makeups, it can be problematic. There are a lot of other things going on over the weekend. At Marriotts Ridge coach Paul Eckert said it is likely his athletics and activities director Gene Brown will have to be on the bench for the start of the game because Eckert has a family commitment, his nephew is being baptized. And at least three of his players, two of them starters, have college placement tests and job commitments.

"We only kept 14 kids on our team, and three of them might not make the game," said Eckert. "And a fourth is coming back from a foot injury and I don't think it would be physically smart to play him. So we may be down to 10 able bodies and if two of them run into each other -- which could happen -- we could be down to eight."

Eckert said he will double check availability numbers Thursday and will call up JV players if he has to.

"I'm going to impress on my kids that college placement exams and work commitments are more important than one baseball game," said Eckert, noting that this one baseball game is against undefeated Hammond, "just as I would feel remiss to miss this family baptism commitment."

The coach noted calling up junior varsity players for one game to cover a specific circumstance does not jeopardize those players' JV status.

-- Sandra McKee