Although the weather may be warming up nicely, city staff are advising people to keep kicking the soccer ball around in their yards for just another week or two.

Jason Peters of Steinbach Parks and Rec says most of the grass on the baseball diamonds, soccer and football fields survived the winter very well but notes, particularly at A.D. Penner Park, the baseball diamonds are still quite wet. He offers this message to residents.

"Patience, that’s the message. If you can stay in your back yard and kick it around as long as possible. Those fields do a need a bit of time before they start taking a lot of wear and tear. It’s going to be a couple weeks before they’re all ready to go. We kind of aim for the end of April, beginning of May and that’s a typical start date. We’re still aiming for that in terms of getting them open but they may not be open a lot in advance."

Peters notes they are still waiting for some of the frost to come out of the ground and for the water to dry up but adds if the weather stays sunny and temperatures stay around ten degrees or warmer during the day, the fields should all be ready to according to schedule. Peters adds the grass seems to have wintered considerably better this year than last.

"I think in the winter of 2017 we had a warm spell in February and then a bunch of freezing rain and then that sits on top of the grass, freezes and does quite a bit of damage and kills off its snow mold and whatever else and this year we don’t seem to have nearly as much of it. The winter was better on our grass and the other thing is that it goes dormant in the fall first so you need the ground to freeze first before you get the snow otherwise the plant is still alive and you get the wet snow sitting on top of it and it doesn’t allow it to breathe."

Peters says it seems like that all happened in the appropriate order this year so everyone will benefit from that.