The Shawano Youth League will host 22 teams for it’s 11-under and 12-under baseball tournaments starting Friday at Memorial Park in Shawano.
Add that to the 23 teams for the coach pitch baseball and 10-under and 12-under softball tournament last weekend and the 24 teams for next week’s 9-under and 10-under baseball tournaments and that is 69 youth teams with parents, family and friends in tow coming to the area.
That has a pretty big economic impact, said John Reinders, Shawano Youth League president.
Beyond the $250 it costs for a team to register for the tournament, teams will usually stay and spend money in the area.
“We hear from a number of teams and they sound like they work on filling up campgrounds and hotel rooms and those types of things,” Reinders said. “So I think we have a good impact on the city.”
While he didn’t have any actual numbers, Reinders said the turnout at last weekend’s tournaments was the biggest he’d seen.
“I do know that the last weekend the park was full,” he said. “It seems more full than it was last year. I’d say we had a few thousand down at the park last weekend.”
Reinders, who has been president for the last three years and on the board for the last four, says the tournament takes a lot of work to pull off.
“It takes some recruiting to try and get our tournaments as full as possible,” Reinders said. “We work with local communities by sending our teams to their tournaments and, hopefully, they send their teams to us. Then it is a matter of lining up umpires and getting enough parent volunteers from people who participate in the league.”
The support from volunteers and local businesses has been essential in pulling off the event, Reinders said.
“Without their help it is extremely difficult to keep everything on schedule and the concession stands running,” he said. “The support from local businesses has been fantastic. We try to buy as much product for our concession stands from local businesses.”
This weekend’s tournaments begin at 5 p.m. with all four of the diamonds at Memorial Park playing games. Shawano faces Bonduel on the little league diamond. There will be nine games total Friday.
Saturday games will be played all day starting at 8:30 a.m. and continuing until the last games begin at 5:30 p.m. On Sunday, games will be played starting at 8 a.m. concluding with the championship games scheduled to start at 12:30 p.m.
Categories
