The Fastpitch Chronicle

The Second Annual Poynette Summer Fastpitch Jamboree battled some pretty tough circumstances on the weekend. Other tournaments experienced the same issues. The Battle of the Borders tournament suffered the same fate with some teams getting in only one or perhaps two games there..

No matter where the tournament is located, the best laid tournament plans all go awry when prolonged or heavy rains enter the picture. There are always choices involved but sooner or later a decision has to be made. Once a decision is made, all the other choices have been eliminated. It becomes too late to turn back and make a different decision once teams have been notified of the original decision. There isn’t a tournament committee anywhere that wouldn’t want to play as many games as possible in a safe manner. The terms reasonable and prudent always carry a tremendous amount of weight when making decisions on whether to stage the competition or not. Experienced people in every community where events are staged are very familiar with the way their facility responds to prolonged or heavy rains. They base their decisions on that knowledge, experiences and expertise.

The host committee for any tournament surely understands the frustration that people experience when they want to play ball and the weather forecast for the next day calls for no rain and sunny conditions all day. However, there are more parts to a ball yard than a skinned infield. In many instances, the skinned portion looks very playable but out in the outfield, inches of water lie hidden from view until one actually walks out into the water standing just under the top of the grass. Or perhaps the sun comes out and a glisten from that standing water shows up when viewed from outside the facility.

Poynette and Arlington, the host venue communities for the Summer Jamboree received between six and seven inches of rain from Friday morning through Sunday morning at 2:40 AM.

On Friday, after the rain stopped the Jamboree volunteers went to work with scoop shovels, five gallon buckets and bags of diamond dry in attempt to get games going by the official start time of 1:00 PM. Like any tournament committee anywhere, they had already invested hundreds if not thousands of dollars and many hours in preparation for the event. Several visiting teams and one in particular were not happy and actually told us it would be impossible to play on the fields at all on that day. The committee was told that the day should have been cancelled before people started to travel to the event. The committee however, knew what the weather forecast was and how well their facilities react to prolonged or heavy rains. They knew that if the weather forecast held true for the rest of the day and evening, all the games would get played. The concession stand committee people trusted their wisdom and began preparing cooked food.

The forecast held true. The rain let up. Work began on the fields at 12.10 PM. The scheduled 1:00 PM game started at 1:06 PM. The games on the other two fields at the high school started on time at 2:30 PM. The games on the downtown diamonds were played on time. Once playable there, the volunteers headed for Arlington and were able to get those fields playable. All scheduled games on Friday were played. More than 30 bags of diamond dry were used to get the seven fields playable.

During the night time hours on Friday and early Saturday, rain re-entered the picture. Two separate, slow-moving storms (as described by the National Weather Service out of Sullivan) affected the Jamboree. It stopped raining in Poynette at 9:00 AM and those volunteers took more than 100 gallons of water off the varsity diamond infield. No sooner had they gotten the water off when the second, slow-moving storm arrived overhead. It started raining again and very hard. The storm lingered. At 11:05 it let up. The volunteers, 15 of them, started working on the fields. Using the five-gallon buckets and scoop shovels, they removed more than 1000 gallons of water off the three fields at the high school (the bucket carriers kept track of how many they emptied). Games started at noon on the varsity field and soon thereafter on the other two fields. The shovelers and bucket brigade then moved to the downtown fields where another 1000 gallons was removed from the two fields there.  The downtown south field had a game start on it at 12:12 PM. The downtown north diamond was unplayable with standing water in the outfield more than 3 inches deep and puddles all over the infield. Still, the diamond crew worked on that field throughout the afternoon and removed all the standing water on the infield. We started a 10-Under game on that field Saturday evening at about 7 PM.  By 6:00 PM Saturday our diamond volunteers in Arlington were able to get those two fields ready for the Sunday games.

On Saturday evening, during the second or third innings of the four games still in progress at about 7:00 PM, lightning flashed in Poynette and kept flashing. Our directors met with the team leaders from all eight teams that were in action at the time and arranged a make up plan that would start at 8:00 am. At 8:40 PM Poynette and Columbia County were put under a tornado warning. One such funnel cloud touched down not very far to the east of Poynette after passing right over the volunteers huddled in a safe room inside the high school. In Poynette it was a downpour. During that warning, the Tournament Competition Committee was meeting inside the school. As the storm subsided somewhat and the tornado warning expired, they ventured out onto the fields.

The fields, all of them, were completely underwater with no hope of recovering more than one or possibly two of them before noon or 1 PM Sunday. The dugouts on the varsity softball diamond in Poynette had two feet of water standing in them and more under the false floors. Arlington had more than seven inches of water standing in the outfield before dark on that evening. Pictures of the larger field at Arlington were taken. The parking lot there had several inches of water flowing over top of it after the rain had subsided somewhat. The committee was out of diamond dry with no source to get more on a Sunday morning. They had purchased six bags from the state USSSA commissioner and that was the extent of what he could come up with. They contacted the athletic director in Portage to see if he had some they could purchase. He had none.

During their storm-filled meeting, they agreed to call a full organizational meeting on Sunday morning to create an amicable resolution with every team involved in the event. They composed and sent an e-mail to every team leader and they personally called all 12 of the 16-Under coaches and told them it was impossible to play on Sunday. The 16-U coaches were told that the tournament directors would be in contact with them to resolve the situation.

Working around that much inclement weather taxes everyone. The tournament committee is proud of the efforts the volunteers put forth.

They promised to be in touch with all team leaders in the following few days and they have been. 

As they move forward, they look forward to working with and for all the fantastic people whom they met, worked with during a trying weekend and have heard from since the cancellation. The complimentary words from so many participants buoyed the volunteers to keep on trying to complete the event. In the end, however, it was impossible to do.

They would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who worked hard, competed hard, kept their composure and understanding and has remained positive and understands that the effort was there, and that their eventual resolution with the teams is an amicable one.

As they all move forward, their organization hopes that all fans of the game do so in a positive manner no matter the event. 

Poynette’s tournament committee surely was not the only one on the weekend that faced wet conditions over and over.

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Here is another personal note: I hate to see rain ruin a great day for fastpitch. If however, it does rain at an event I’m helping with, I do enjoy trying to get things back into playing shape as quickly as possible. In Poynette there are several of us who know exactly how each of our fields respond to rain in all forms – drizzle, constant drizzle, light rain, steady rain, one heavy downpour, an extended downpour etc. Each one of our five fields in Poynette is different just as no two people are the same. We pride ourselves in being able to get fields playable and do it quickly. People who travel here and have done so over time, keep entering our events because they know that if there is any chance at all of playing some games, they will get played here. Trust me, when our in-ground dugouts fill with runoff it means we’ve had more than 3 inches of rain in a short period of time. That’s what happened on Saturday night.

That pair of sneakers and new socks I wrote about earlier were mine. I was in a hurry to get water off the fields and didn’t want to take even a few minutes to walk to my car and change into the boots I’d brought along. When I got home on Friday night the shoes and socks went right into the garbage can. Several other fellas and girls did the same. The Schulz sisters from Arlington were troopers in that water. One ruined her sneakers while the younger one undoubtedly reduced the life of her cleats. They shoveled water and they carried it too. Our varsity catcher helped out by carrying five gallon buckets of water to a drain behind home plate. Those buckets weight about 50 pounds when full.

On Sunday morning during the PFO meeting there were some people who were restless. They've been bouyed the past couple of days by e-mails from people who really get it. Thanks for sharing those with the committee. It helps them see a glimmer of light at the end of what seems like a dark tunnel. There are great, appreciative people out there who notice hard work and dedication to a common goal.

Have a great Fastpitch Day!
Keep it Rising!
Bob