July 23-28 (90 hours)

Monday was a day of special events. Many things were going on at the Coach’s check in. Coaches or managers came to pick up passes player gift bags, coach’s gift bucket, agendas for things that were going on, and a chance to get local area information. My role at check in was to talk to coaches and managers about the Opening Ceremonies later that night. We had that available for a couple of hours then while the guys were at the Coach’s meeting I was actually off to the mall to set up the Mom’s meeting. I stayed a while once the moms were showing up, passed out gift bags for them, answered questions and made sure things were going well. Once that was established I had to go over to our civic center. There we hosted a college recruiting seminar where we had two local softball college coaches talk about all the things these girls really needed to start focusing on. I was there to set up everything and once we had everyone there I also played the role as a college athlete and answered those questions as well as adding to what the coach’s had to say. I then had to rush over to the Delmarva Shorebirds for Opening Ceremonies. There I helped get the last little things in the facility ready. I tried to make little personal touches like give all the umpires leis since it was a beach theme as well as personally greet all our top community heads that were coming to watch. After that we could pretty much sit back and just watch only having to do little things here and there. It was an amazing success!!!

Tuesday was when the first ball was pitched. I started the day meeting with the bosses early at headquarters. From there we went to see all the games get off the ground. Going to each park and complex. Only half the teams played on Tuesday, the other half would play their first game on Wednesday.

Wednesday was another day of what we call pool play. This day was full of the rest of the teams playing their first 2 or 3 games. All the results would then set them up into bracket play where we would then begin double elimination. I had a different role that day. Now I would not be traveling site to site but I was stationary at the main complex. And while the state director was there for tournament info I too could answer their questions because I’ve been a site director at other tournaments and have worked very very close and hard when building this tournament. In addition I was in charge of the scores. All the state site directors reported the scores to me; I would enter them into our computer system then configure it all to get the seeding according for the day of games. I had to make sure all that info was posted on the internet asap for those that were following the games but not there as well as rely info to all the sites so we had it posted everywhere. I continued that until almost 930-10 every single night.

The games lasted up until Saturday night. All the days were quite the same besides that day. That day started off the same but it was a great day for PR. And while every day I made it a point to network and personally go up to teams and families to see how they were enjoying their time as well as thank them for coming.Yet, the last day was our last face to face chance to making a good impression to get them to come back next year. At the last day there was only six teams left ad six games left. This really gave us a good chance to watch the games and thank the coaches after each game. Once our tournament director announced and awarded the girl/s from that team it was my job to post their name and award on the internet. I’ve learned so much about their computer program.
Its one they use at all their tournaments, for all sports, and all year round. I’d be able to use it if I just work a weekend tournament for them again or if I go to work for USSSA as suggested they wanted.

After everything started to wrap up we ended the day pretty normal and went for a late dinner. And while all of us were exhausted we couldn’t help but talk about everything that happened that week. It was a great way to informally overview the week.