Carolina Cardinal's Early Bird signing in Rockhill, S.C.

Thought's, Comments, Concerns....

 

We played last night with a slight rain delay-So far so good! Sorta surprised(but always welcome) to see the number of college coaches for Friday night play. Looking foward to Saturday and Sunday.

 

Over all for the Randolph Rage this was a good Showcase. Its always good to see D1 schools at your games. I even seen coachs at our 9 am Sat. Hargett park game. We finished the weekend 4-0 with only 1 rain out game.

 

Same here-Constant flow of college coaches, we even had 6 coaches behind our dugout late (9pm) Friday night. Couple of my girls had several request to attend certain college softball camps,which is always a good sign during a dead period. We went 3 and 1 with 1 rain out game -alot of hot weather during the day and some wild weather a night but we all know you can't control mother nature. We'll be back in 2012...

 

Somebody has to ask ?

Well organized tournament, lots of coaches on hand and our only loss was a 1 run nail biter.

But I gotta ask, if this is a showcase, why did it follow strict ASA rules when it came to the lineup and substitutions? Why not let teams bat as many as they want and have unlimited substitutions?

 

Well, then you might not have had that 1 run nail biter. They might have batted their cleanup batter in the 5, 6, 7 spots also. Only the other team would do that of course. Just saying.

 

Ray's way

Simple answer: It's worked since 1989 so why change it.
I'll give you a little more leeway in the Fireworks, Late Summer, and Memorial tournaments but we will continue the Early Bird and the Classic with the rules he set.

 

We Had Fun!!!!

Great tournament, special thank you to Sharyn for working with my youngest son's HS Graduation schedule.
Rick thank you for the surprise on Saturday morning, we appreciated the great game you gave us. We also appreciate all the coach's that watched us play.
Foothills Heat-Simmons

 

Some thoughts about my first "Cardinal" showcase. I believe that at 60 teams the talent pool was extremely diluted. There should be some sort of selective process for teams that enter other than whoever pays first gets in. There were clearly teams there that were not showcase material and it showed with one score I know of being 15-0. That should not happen in a showcase. The only way a college coach can truly evaluate talent is to see them against similar/good talent. I saw and talked with several college coaches who walked away from some games for that very reason. I also think the scoreboards should have been utilized, if for nothing else but to keep up with balls and strikes. I personally like to see if a player adjusts how she swings the bat when she gets deep in the count. I understand that it wasn't about keeping score, but as we see from previous posts everyone was keeping score in their head anyway. I know the college coaches had booklets with very small fonts to see who the players were, but it would have been helpful to give the players wristbands to let people know what year a player was at a glance. It was a very lucrative fundraiser, but IMO fundraising was the main priority instead of actual showcasing.

 

Thanks for the input

We welcome all comments.
I would like to address a couple of your points.
It is very difficult for us to know the caliber of a team that was just formed or one created by someone who may have split off another team. Even some of the "power house" teams have to start over some time.
We try to make it as competitive as possible based on what we know or hear.
We do know some of the teams and try to make sure that every game they play against an opponent is not 15-0. That does know one any good. While I do like the "invited teams" tournaments we play in, they are very hard to get into and everyone can't go there.
So, what happens to the other kids. Every team has kids who are good ballplayers. My daughter was one of those kids. Not the greatest athlete on the planet but a very good ballplayer.
If they don't have the opportunity to showcase their talents, what happens to them? I know many kids who I think can play somehwere at the next level but may be on a team that is not that competitve for one reason or another. What do you do to help them?
Now to the real root of your post.
I like to hear all the comments about the enormous amount of dollars we generate from these tournaments. I hear it every year.
Folks that don't do tournaments of this type, don't always see the cost attached to the tournament. It usually takes well over half the proceeds on the expense side: Umpires, UIC, balls, some hotel rooms for umpires and staff, water and ice, ect... all adds up.
It is a good fundraiser for us but not the millions that some would think we make and I think most of the quality teams who play with us understand what it takes to pull something like this off. We generate funds to help our kids and their families. I don't apologize for that. I think all the teams I'm associated with do fundraisers of some type. Ours happens to be hosting tournaments. I think we do a good job.
In the future we may look at doing an elite team tournament. But who determines who is "elite"??? I will catch some grief over that one too.
We will continue to do what we do. It has worked for many years and hopefully will work for many more.
Once again, I do appreciate your take on our tournament.
Rick McHone
Carolina Cardinals
336-416-6056