Lasers tourney observations

[default]

Just some comments on this weekends tourney....

First off, I have attended every Lasers tourney including the fall edition with nothing but raves. This year the quality of teams were good as usual, fields were taken care of, Trash was non existant, good times catching up with OFC'ers, no complaints there.
Ok, the not so good part....

.....We played at Community park, on mens slow pitch fields. Last year there were fences on these fields, this year, none. Alot of basehits rolling thru, tons of "inside the park homeruns". Outfielders sitting at 240-250 shagging home runs is not womens softball. It takes away a element of the game that they experience at the college level pitching wise and defensively. Why couldnt, with the size this tourney is and with the quality of teams attending , there have been fences? Absolutely no excuse for this one.
.....Concessions at Community park was limited to a trailer with 5.00 brats and 4.00 hotdogs ! You had to buy them or you could face the long climb up the stairs of death to go get something. This a major peeve since at a tourney i can personally make or break a concession with my hot dog consumption lol.
.....I do not envy trying to keep the brackets organized the size of this tourney. But Friday at the John Bishop park we didnt get our 3rd pool game due to 8 teams all scheduled in their packets/schedules on 2 diamonds. Being the "who cares" (?) 3rd game of our pool, we were sent home so the 2nd game teams scheduled at the same time could play. WTF.....
.....The parking at JBP wasnt NEARLY enough wth teams parking 2-3 blocks away lugging equipment when there was a whole parking lot reserved for Lasers that had plenty more room? People were "reserving" parking spots with chairs, ****ing off people that couldnt park , hell almost saw a couple good fights break out.
.....Alot of the petty complaints levied at the Dayton Metro applied here, overflowing portalets, too dusty (lol) Sitty umpires (had a couple that need to retire) shelled shocked people in the stands from errant foul balls etc. ( 5-8 minutes of gametime spent on retrieving the 2 balls the blues had) Bottom line is everyone has these, tournaments this size have these problems.

Last but not least, for whoever took the small bag and gym shoes that was taken out of the back of my truck, enjoy my dirty drawers and socks !!

.....Overall a great time, not as great on the field this week but we enjoyed ourselves.

 

[default]

Want to thanks Lasers for putting on a great tournament! Dd played 16u so we were at Hubard and Civic both nice parks and they had homerun fences, ample parking, plenty of restrooms and great grounds crew. (no gate fee!) When the rain came on Sunday, the crew got the fields playable very quickly. Saw tons of college coaches this weekend: Akron, Ashland, Kentucky, Tiffin, Kent State, Wright State, Hillsdale, Dominion, and others.....Thanks for a great weekend of ball.

 

[default]

One note of importance health wise. Community park is infested with ticks. I pulled a half dozen off me and twice that off my 6 ur old this week end. One was dug in so hope there is no Lyme disease

 

[default]

One other note where someone could make a killing cleaning port o let's on the weekend

 

[default]

I forgot about all the ticks. I didnt get eaten on as much as some.

 

[default]

Hitter23, I'm guessing you were playing 18u. All of the 16u fields had fences. I visited a couple of other parks with the younger age groups and they had fences also.

Overall I thought it was a great weekend for our teams. We got in 8 games and were able to play some really good teams. We spent a lot of time on the diamonds. Next year I'm going with SPF 2000

 

[default]

I thought the Lasers did a wonderful job with this tournament!! They worked hard on the fields and where we played (Civic and Huber) the port-o-lets were clean, the brackets were kept up and the games were played on time. Umpires for the most part were pretty good and consistent, may not have agreed with every call or pitch but who does? The concessions could have been better, but who can really complain when you don't have gate fees and you are free to bring your own coolers. I'd say the field crews were probably some of the best i've seen. Thanks to the Lasers for all your hard work!!

 

[default]

I thought things went as well as could be expected. Being involved with the Stingray tournament for the last 5 years I can appreciate all the work and volunteers needed to make it work. My only "beef" for Mr. Cavanaugh to consider is next year instead of having the losers, losers, losers bracket to make sure we know who actually took 29th place why don't we allocate that umpire money to make sure we can get 2 umpires in pol play and Saturday. I saw games decided by great teams in the winners bracket by umpires who can't be in two places or see two things at once. it isn't fair to the umpires and it isn't fair to the teams.

And for the old A$$ umpire I had against center grove....Some advice...if you start every coach's conference with "I am a Big 10 umpire and assignor" please don't stand 7 feet behind the catcher and flinch every time a pitch hits the catcher's mitt. I have watched plenty of big 10 games and have yet to see one behind the plate with their butt touching the backstop! LOL

 

[default]

@Stingrays99:

It is starting to sound like the 12u and under don't want extra games. Lasers didn't plan on using one umpire. According to another post, ASA umpires association couldn't provide enough umpires to cover 12u and 10u and didn't let Lasers know that until shortly before the tournament.

So next year, maybe the Lasers will opt not to include the extra games for the 10u and 12u and will still charge the same price as Stingrays and GAPSS. And yes, you should get two umps for that price.

 

[default]

I think the umps were good (we had 2 for all games at 14u), the fields were re-lined between each game, and the porta potties were okay (I didn't hear they were bad, I never used one, but you know word travels!).

My biggest complaint, which is not in anyone's control, was parking. It was a mixture of bad draw of field and narrow streets that only let you park on one side. Otherwise, we had a fun weekend with some great competition.

 

[default]

The fields for the 16U games at Civic and Huber were in great shape with temp fences. Deep temp fences, but temp fences. Fields re-lined and raked after most games for us. Parking at Huber is a main problem. Must be addressed I think. We had a good time. The only real B++ch is the concessions. No burgers at Civic just lukewarm dogs and popcorn really.

Great competition, decent umps. .... Hope to return next year if the 18U problems I am hearing about get corrected.

 

[default]

16u Tourney: Plenty of warm-up space, temporary fences, great field crews to re-line the fields, no gate fee, and coolers allowed. Constructive criticism: the lunch concessions at Huber were pretty pricey. People, I'm reaching pretty deep to come up with lunch concessions as one of my few criticisms. A second constructive criticism relates to the field condition: three times I nearly broke my neck stepping down into an unexpected hole (like missing that last step on a staircase) during post-game lineups. Me breaking my neck would have been no big deal. But I witnessed two players who fell flat on their faces while trying to get out of the holes on righty side of the box and our players were saying how difficult it was to break out of that box.

The coaches that we saw are the same as reported by fanandfun above.

As I posted on another thread where someone called the extra two games "worthless", we loved getting 10 quality games in over this weekend. From the standpoint of economics, there probably isn't another tournament in Ohio offering this much bang for the buck.

About those tick issues: we had a long conversation during our down time about whether these bugs were actually ticks. Casey the Wonder Dog and I agreed that the black bugs we saw closely resembled ticks but weren't the same critters.

Great job Lasers.

 

[default]

We played at Gahanna West Middle School then JFK Park in Reynoldsburg ......... we had problems with black bugs ... there was debate as to whether or not they were tics...... cant blame the Lasers for that issue but they sure were annoying.

All of the fields were in good shape and well taken care of.

Do not understand the 3rd pool game which has no value for bracket play....... seems that all teams in pool should get to play each other. Forget the odd number of teams in a pool excuse ... limit the tournament's number of teams and keep them at four team pools.

Thought the idea of a playoff bracket for the teams with two losses was a great way of getting some additional games in, however; a bit disappointing that teams chose to forfeit than to play the games. It is my understanding that so many teams had chosen forfeits that the Lasers sent umps home only to need them later in the day when the post 12:30 games started . (Rain delay did not help either) Although I understand why teams would chose to forfeit, they should advise the tournament director prior to the start of bracket play ..... I am sure the scheduling conflicts became a nightmare for everyone involved. Again, I think an opportunity to get 3 games in on Sunday was fantastic.

Not a complaint, only a suggestion ..... this was our second year in a row playing at Gahanna Middle School ..... they need to move the portable restrooms to another location .... the third base line of field two was tough to watch a game.

 

[default]

...why don't we allocate that umpire money to make sure we can get 2 umpires in pol play and Saturday.

I don't believe it was a money issue at all. It was an umpire availability issue.

Rough figures based on my conversation with the ASA assignor this weekend...the Lasers tourney involved approximately 650 scheduled games. Not too big of a deal as the central Ohio ASA umpire group handles tournaments of that size fairly often. But also happening this weekend was the Westerville tournament and that had an additional 350 games scheduled. So all together there were nearly 1000 games that needed to be covered this weekend.

In the cases where games had only one umpire, it wasn't done as a cost-saving measure. It was because there simply were not enough umpires and using one was the last resort.

 

[default]

I loved the format and extra games. I mentioned on another thread that Sunday playoff games I would rather play back to back at 8:00 and 9:30 then get out of the way rather then 8am and 2 pm. Let championship teams sleep in come at 11:00 and take over. 12u fields, organization, brackets and concessions in Whitehall were great. Yes 1 ump Fri/Sat stunk espicially when guys were working alone 5 games in a row. Thats tough. Now that the Whitehall Classic Tournament folded either Lasers or Westerville need to move up a week.

 

[default]

I thought things went as well as could be expected. Being involved with the Stingray tournament for the last 5 years I can appreciate all the work and volunteers needed to make it work. My only "beef" for Mr. Cavanaugh to consider is next year instead of having the losers, losers, losers bracket to make sure we know who actually took 29th place why don't we allocate that umpire money to make sure we can get 2 umpires in pol play and Saturday. I saw games decided by great teams in the winners bracket by umpires who can't be in two places or see two things at once. it isn't fair to the umpires and it isn't fair to the teams.

And for the old A$$ umpire I had against center grove....Some advice...if you start every coach's conference with "I am a Big 10 umpire and assignor" please don't stand 7 feet behind the catcher and flinch every time a pitch hits the catcher's mitt. I have watched plenty of big 10 games and have yet to see one behind the plate with their butt touching the backstop! LOL

Oohahahaha....

 

[default]

those black bugs were everywhere. but I seen a few fly. ticks do not fly

 

[default]

I completely agree with hitter 23 on all counts. Com Park is dangerous for players and fans. The stairs are unbelieveable with all your equipment and tents, etc. Foul balls at these fields are ridiculous not to mention seating for fans. Parking at JBP was simply not enough. Another beef I have is (not a Lasers issue) teams that decide to leave the tourney early and don't tell anyone. We had a 5pm game at JBP on Saturday and were at the fields at 4pm. Got to the field and it was already an hour behind schedule and when we were about to play finally at 6:30pm the team we were suppposed to play wasn't even there. They decided to go home early and leave the tourney. Wasted 2.5 hours of players and parents time for a game that would never happen. Very dissapointing for all who were there. Let's just say the teams initials started with OFC..........That's unacceptable and simply inconsiderate to others. Even though angry at the time, I took it upon myself to tell the TD to call the team they would be playing at 8am Sunday morning that they wouldn't have a game either so other teams wouldn't have to deal with this.

 

[default]

Hopefully a no show for game is cause not to get invited back. I also liked all the extra games but did make for a long weekend. Parking at JBP was beyond a disaster. It's pretty tough swallowing having to walk and lug gear from three blocks away and see a reserved lot right by the fields that was always half empty

 

[default]

no complaints... we love this event and our parents understand it's about the competition... not every single detail. My hat is off to the Lasers for tackling this type of event. We finished a game at one ballpark and the ending time was the same as the start time at the other ball park where we supposed to be and they accommodated us getting there. Scheduling is tough and people have to be flexible. People can reply to this by beating up the Lasers, the fields, the porta potty's, and all other things as that's their prerogative. We were there to be pushed and beat up on and that was accomplished. All were happy in our group. Thanks Lasers. Hard to find this level of competition within our state and it live up to expectations. Umpires for the most part were good to very good. With every game... us coaches are expected to prove an umpire wrong ;-).