Delta State’s nationally renowned NCAA Division II baseball team was supposed to open the 2026 season Friday against Harding (Arkansas) University in Cleveland.
That won’t happen. Boo Ferriss Field at Harvey Stadium on the DSU campus in Cleveland is covered in ice and snow. At noon Monday, the temperature was 21 degrees. The wind chill was 7. The weekend forecast is for more freezing temperatures. The DSU Statesmen are sometimes called the Fighting Okra, but they would be more like Eskimos if they played this weekend.
“We’ll play it by ear, but it doesn’t look good, “ Delta State coach Rodney Batts said Monday.
Mike Kinnison Credit: DSU mediaRepairs will have to made to the backstop at Harvey Stadium before any baseball is played.
“The ice on the netting is so heavy with ice, it tore away from the poles,” said Delta State athletic director Mike Kinnison, a former DSU baseball All America and Hall of Fame coach. “In fact, it is so heavy that it bent some of the poles that were holding it up. That will all have to be repaired.”
The good news: Delta State, which must replace 25 seniors who graduated from last year’s team, can continue pre-season workouts in the Bryce Griffis Indoor Practice Facility adjacent to Harvey Stadium.
The Griffis facility was the brainchild of the late Boo Ferriss. For decades, the DSU baseball program was plagued by rainouts – and sometimes early season “ice-outs.” Practice time often was hard to come by.
“Baseball is a game of repetition,” Kinnison said. “You have to do it every day: hitting, pitching, ground balls, double play turns, relay throws, everything. We were missing too much.”
Ferriss spearheaded the drive to raise the money for the indoor facility and secured the lead gift from the late Bryce Griffis, a Starkville timber man and former Delta State baseball and football player.
The 10,400-square-foot facility was completed in December 2000, opened in 2001, and is used by DSU’s baseball, softball, soccer and football teams. In 2004, Kinnison’s Statesmen won a national championship.
Says Batts, whose team worked out indoors Monday, “I don’t know what in the world we would do without it.”
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