USFA and Selma Middle School Rant

I can not believe that as large an organization as USFA is they can not find a better set of fields than the Selma Middle School fields, #1 they are baseball fields that need to be altered, #2 they are ungroomed, dirty, and downright dangerous to play on. One of these days a Girl will get seriously injured at this location and it will be on your shoulders. The amount of money you charge teams and families to participate is outrageous to begin with and then putting them on crappy non-softball fields just puts it over the top. Shame on your organization. I know alot of people are gonna say they do the best they can, but thats garbage and we all know it, alot of Coaches, Parents, and players feel the same way about this park and voiced it loudly, it would be nice if someone in authority stepped up and changed things for the good of the kids.

 

While I can't speak for the field conditions, looking at the overhead picture, one is clearly a softball field as the dimensions are much smaller (both infield perimeter and outfield fence distances).

At least both have dirt infields and the dugouts have roofs. I have seen much worse facilities used for tournaments.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Selma...068&sspn=41.496446,79.189453&vpsrc=6&t=h&z=18

 

USFA

My team plays a good bit of USFA in Ga,Ala and NC and we have always had very nice fields and facilities.We do play in the larger USFA tournaments which they have to accomadate 40 or more teams.You can resolve this in several ways for example do some homework on the field you are playing at weeks before your team plays.Play tournament with more than 10 teams.Also I'm thinking there were not very many teams entered to play this tournament since only 2 fields were used.The director prob gets a really good deal on these fields and didn't need to rent a larger or nicer complex according to the # of teams playing.If you enter larger tournaments this will not happen usually.I'm not taking sides because I have been there and experienced it all when it comes to playing in rat holes to college fields.I do believe safety is s very important issue and the director needs to take that into consideration also.

 

Thanks Blaze Coach the field conditions there were awful, more dirt than grass and where there was grass there were big splotches that caused horrible hops, big holes in the outfield causing girls to fall, and by bracket time you had to stand 6-8 inches off the plate because the holes on the right side were dug so deep, overflowing trash cans before pool games even started, and the smell of sewage was really bad. There were 10 teams I believe playing. I noticed this morning when checking the schedule they are holding another tournament there this weekend and unless they did alot of work to the fields this week they are just unsafe to play on and I hope nobody blows out a knee or worse. Jeffer you are right there is 1 softball and one baseball field, but both had multiple pitchers mounds and were used multi-purpous during the week I guess.

 

SMITHFIELD SELMA HS

Could try to get them to move to Smithfield/Selma HS/rec fields..... 4 fields type complex.... good complex. About 3 miles away

 

That's a nice complex and managed well. And probably already booked. But worth looking into.