Tournament Options?

[Mr. Monday!]

The grounds crew was now were to be found, I think the Raider game had started.

I was following you on everything except for this sentence....Please elaborate....

[Mustafa]

Looks like ASA is starting a new tournament in Sac on Memorial Day weekend right up against The R R Gold tournament. Wow! I guess someone read all these posts and is trying to do something. Which one will YOUR team decide to attend??

Pros: Less $$ entry fee
No Gate fee
You can bring in coolers
Decent fields

Cons: Competition (where will the big name teams go?) Sorcerers, Sting, etc

The Norcal board has been a little "dry" lately, Chime in with your 2 cents folks!! This could get interesting!!

http://www.asatournaments.com

[watchtonsofsoftball]

Personally I would like to see the big teams hit the ASA one as the pros definately outweight the cons. But your right it will take 3-4 top teams to play in the ASA one to draw in other teams and convince them to drive the extra 50 miles into roseville/lincoln from stockton. I'd love to see it though! RR/Grapes need a little competition .... I doubt it will make them change how they do things until it hits their pocketbooks severely. Time will tell...

[Heyall]

Amen to Gary!

Between the lower cost, the lack of gate Nazis and the ability to eat one's own food and drink one's own drinks, let's hope that there will be some more teams there!

Those faux-showcases where they cluster a few teams that are part of the buddy network at only one park to draw in the college coaches and most teams having to pay $700+ to play elsewhere and then demanding $4/person to get in and no coolers is ridiculous! (Add to that the utter lack of between-game field maintenance on sub-par facilites! )

[bruisedshin]

We planned to attend RR Gold this year, but we'll wait to see if the Sac area tournament can get teams. In a way, I'd prefer that Gary not split the team pool, as it was nice to have a 48 team (14U only) tournament in norcal. Between that and the Fresno tourney, there's at least two big tournaments without going to socal.

That said, the Gary Ybarra tournaments are much better run than either the Grapettes or RR Gold ones. No gate fee, no cooler nazis, fields are taken care of, schedules are done early, and at least for us, no drive to Stockton.

[NorCal96]

Let's see... I can drive and extra 45-60 min to the Sac tournament and not pay gate fees: I can bring my own cooler and food; better fields, etc..... Heck the gate fees in Stockton for the 3 days alone will cover my extra gas ($36 for the 3 of us for 3 days).

I agree, the tipping point will be where the major teams go. Looks like it's going to be a "wait and see" process before anything happens. All it will take is for 2-3 of the major teams to sign up at either tournament and that's where everyone will go.

I applaud Gary for stepping up and trying to make things better. After all, it's about the players. I hope he succeeds. Competition is good!!

[lookingIN]

Its not about the players, its about my wallet and how much money I can keep in it.

[DDsMom]

My DD played for a team out of Folsom from 10U up to 14U, then a team out of Sacramento for 12U's (my daughter played up for the Folsom team). Have played in the Sac area AND in the Stockton/Manteca area. I have to say that the Sacramento tournaments are better - blues seem better, fields seem to be taken better care of, etc. Maybe some of the fields in Roseville/Lincoln are newer? Sacramento also seemed to know their teams better...who to bracket against who, so there are more competitve games on Saturday. Just my observation...

AND, what? You think the TDs put on tournaments out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course they want to make some $$s, and if we, as parents, are going to pay so our DDs can play where they need to play to get experience. It's sad to say...and I agree a stance needs to be taken...but my DD is only this age once! Depending on what your DD wants from her softball playin' days, one of the reasons you join a team is to be competitive (DD won't improve her game unless she plays other competitive teams!)...of course, you want her to have fun, too!

[lv2earat8]

Best softball news in a while! Needs to be done. If all the coaches get together and decide to attend the Sac tourney It will be a win win for Nor Cal softball. Finally the customer(players and parents) will be taken care of.

[Iluvblue]

For me, as a coach, one of the main things is field quality. Fields with slow pitch fences change the entire game around. Fields that have pitchers pitching with a stride foot going into a 12 inch trench are not acceptable.

The city of Stockton makes a ton of money off of these tournaments, so they should do something about Mcnair and Louis park or teams will look elsewhere.

Ive been complaining about costs going up at RIDICULOUS rates for several years. At some point teams and parents reach a breaking point(I think we are perilously close). When tournaments get so costly that it hurts, teams will band together and do their own thing. There are plenty of teams out their that have access to fields.

The fields I have access to are FREE.

We did a 4 team friendly last month, each team got 3 games with a 1 man umpire crew and it cost each team a TOTAL of 60 dollars.

You could see that happen more and more if costs go way up this year. I think teams are at their breaking point.

Us teams are consumers, and just like any consumer, you must way the cost of the product up against the benefit you get from the product.

I personally dont like to do friendlies (at least not often). I think the tournaments offer what the kids need. They need to play games where winning and losing matters. They need that Sunday elimination bracket.

Arnaiz is a GREAT place to play (with only 1 problem... foul balls, no nets) I dont have a problem with no food allowed in. The people running Arnaiz provide us with a GREAT service. They give us GREAT fields every single week. Do you really expect that to happen for free? You can easily go to the parking lot and eat your food. Not a big deal to me.

Louis used to be a very good place to play, but it is going down hill fast. Sacramento is not a central location. Face it, Stockton is in the middle and thus the logical choice of where teams want to go.

Currently, playing in Sac just wont cut it due to overall quality of teams....... but if teams get fed up with costs and conditions, that could change real fast.


So for me, keep costs to teams down and improve the fields, and I will stay in Stockton forever.

Customers do have final say though, so lets see what happens.