Hello Fastpitch Fans
It’s been a cold week with many a game postponed or cancelled outright. Today was no exception in this part of the Badger state.
The schedule for the 29th version of the Poynette Fastpitch Jamboree is finally finalized and posted on the website for all to view. There are 51 teams taking part this year and that’s a Jamboree record. The increase in teams resulted in us being able to include Lodi as one of the host venues. Lodi has a very nice facility behind their high school that gets better every year. The other good thing about adding Lodi is
that the travel from Poynette to Lodi is about 15 minutes. It’s even less time to get from Lodi to Arlington. Lodi to DeForest is about 15-18 minutes and from Lodi to Portage is about half an hour. That means that with a two hour time slot teams canplay at one venue and get to a neighboring one to play their next game. It gives kids a chance to see more than once facility and gives them a chance to see mor and different teams.
This year the team traveling the farthest is Northwestern. That school is located in Maple which on U.S. Highway 2 southeast of Superior but not very far south and east on Hwy 2. Northwestern will play both days with a 6:00 PM game on Friday evening. There are some excellent matchups includied in the 63 games to be played over the two days. That’s right 63 games easily making the Poynette Fastpitch Jamboree the largest high school event in the state. All the venues are good ones as well. A better name could be the Columbia County Jamboree or maybe better yet the Badger State Jamboree but we’ve had teams from Illinois enter in the past so for the ease of recognition we’ll just keep calling it the Poynette Jamboree. Mor than two dozen umpires will work the games. Mor e than 100 volunteers at 12 fields will get fields ready, sell hot dogs, chase foul balls and dole out information.
To see the schedule of games just go to the high school tab on this website and scroll down to the tab that says Poynete Jamboree. Games are scheduled every two hours in an attempt to keep start times close to every two hours. Listing games with less time to play them works on paper but it never works on the dirt.
The Coaches Honor Roll page on the Fastpitch Chronicle website is a bit screwed up as I lost some of the information so take a look at that several times and get back to me with the information that I lost on there. Trying to keep the list on two websites is what cost me the oficial one on my website. It was an Oops moment so don’t get angry just get back in touch with me. We can get it all back together by working together.
Some highlights from the week include some no-hitters, lots of home runs and kids who hit more than one home run in the same game. Jenna Herring of Luther Prep in Watertown did htat on Thursday in Poynette with a three run shot and another blast with one runner aboard. I sent her a Fastpitch Chronicle Home Run Award certificate this morning before I did any work on the Jamboree schedule. Tonight I prepared a First-Ever Home run award certificate for Brooke Roberts of Randolph and also a First-Ever no-hitter award certificate for Macie Weber of Spencer who tossed a no-hitter at Owen-Withee with 13 ks in an 11-0 victory. I’m sure there are other deserving kids in the state but it takes a coach, fan, parent etc. to get me the informaiton. The certificates are free and normally in school colors.
The Portage Invite is tomorrow. I can’t remember when former Portage coach Don Andringa started theat Optimist event but I know that Poynette has been in it ever since it began. I think it was my daughter’s freshman year in high school which would have been 1990. Portage at that time played their home games at Veteran’s Memorial Field where I had to have played at least 200 men’s fastpitch games in my younger playing days.
I’m about to start up a new feature area of the website where I’ll be featuring “People in the Game.” It will be interviews with those people with some insight into their careers in the game. Watch for the first ones to start appearing next week.
The Fastpitch Chronicle Rankings will be out again on Monday. It’s interesting to see how the rankers who do the FPC rankings list their top teams compared to the WFSCA coaches poll that limits voters to being head coaches only and voting only in the division of play their team plays WIAA tournament series softball. The FPC rankings have been the mainstay in Wisconsin for 15 years. We’ll not stop ranking due to another idea in the game. Actually the two rankings are good for the game because it creates discussion and discussion is what drives the game no matter the topic.
The WFSCA all star teams have been chosen by the association members who are in charge of that event. It will be held at the new fields on Highway 13 just north of Wisconsin Dells and just south of Chula Vista Resort. OF course that venue is artificial turf filled with rubber pellets and perhaps some silica sand. No spikes are allowed when playing on those fields . The date for those games is 17th of June.
That’s it from here tonight.
Have a great weekend.
Keep it Rising!
Bob
