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Real name:
Kim Schmitt
Location:
Erin, WI
Division:
Men's 55
Message posted by Schmitty »Message board home »Start a new discussion
| March 22, 2023 Schmitty | Topic: Tournaments Discussion: Music City Not what I expected from my first SSUSA tournament. After 30+ years of playing, managing, coordinating and spectating slow and fast pitch tournaments, this was by far the most poorly run tournament I have ever seen. The SSUSA should be embarrassed and the local director banned from ever running anything above t-ball. No-one can control the weather, but the effort put in by the staff was minimal and disorganized. I arrived in Nashville on Friday to sunny mid 50's, city was completely dry, I am told it rained the couple days prior. Scheduled to play 11am Saturday morn, at 8:30pm Friday notified game time now 3pm at a different park. I suspect they never attempted to address the field conditions until late Friday evening. Arrive at the park at 1:30 to find we are now scheduled for 5pm. Reduced to 40 minute games, but no urgency in getting next games started. Actual game time was about 7:30pm, after playing 3 innings they called time limit (the only time I saw this called all day) we win the 4 inning game. Wait an hour for next game only to have the other team forfeit. Directors cannot even give a guess as to playing time Sunday morn, only info is play starts at 8am not sure where. 5:30am Sunday receive notification to play at 8am at original park that we were supposed play at on Saturday. Arrived at 7am to an infield that resembled a frozen plowed farm field. The furrows were a minimum of 3" deep with large areas of ankle breaking frozen clumps 2-4 feet in diameter. The field had obviously not been touched since and original deep drag on Friday evening. No one with the organization makes any effort to fix the field - dragging it would have likely broken up the clumps and made it playable, yet the only work done was to chalk the frozen plowed field. Both teams refuse to play on this field -they refer us to an unused field which was marginally better, but playable. Of the 3 games scheduled for 8am the other two are forfeited by teams refusing to play in dangerous conditions. We play on the most playable of the fields losing a 5 inning game and being directed back to the frozen plowed field for the next game. The field has still not been dragged, the Directors refuse to do anything such as moving the games to the playable field or finding another park. Again both teams refuse to play, eventually flip for it and we lose. Or did we? the other team was scheduled to play two hours later on the same frozen plowed field. |
