Stories & Photos by Joe Parrino

After five victories and a first-place trophy to show for it, there was one more thing 10 softball players from Camden, Tenn., had to do before leaving Hopkinsville: take a nice cool dip.

Normally, Hopkinsville’s Comfort Suites closes its pool at 10 p.m. But the team didn’t finish its final game at United Southern Girls Fastpitch state tournament until 9:30 p.m. The time to drive back to the hotel from Ruff Park and change out of softball gear would at least be another 30 minutes. Too late for a swim, it seemed.

 Then Kentucky’s director for USGF, Tom O’Daniel, picked up the phone. his league had already brought the hotel a great deal of business, O’Daniel reasoned with the manager. Besides, there were five more major tournaments scheduled for Hopkinsville this year alone. Couldn’t the hotel keep the pool open a little longer for repeat customers? he asked.

That night the girls got to soak up their victory.

First-rate facilities and generous hospitality have made Hopkinsville the premier site in Kentucky for the USGF. The growing league has 435 sanctioned teams around the country and counting.

O’Daniel said the combination of two well-run softball complexes, at Ruff Park and Tie Breaker Park, enables the community to host up to 70 teams at a time. The tournament on June 26-27 included 52 teams from Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois and Missouri.

O’Daniel estimated that between players, coaches,umpires and parents, at least 2,000 out-of-towners attended.

“There’s a lot of money being spent in Hopkinsville,” O’Daniel said.

Rachelle Caldwell, a coach and parent of the Panthers ’01 team that celebrated in the Comfort Suites pool, estimated her family spent about $300 in Hopkinsville that weekend.

Between two-nights lodging, meals at concession stands and local restaurants, shopping at Wal-Mart and a gas-up of the family’s trailer, the bill quickly added up, Caldwell said. And that $300 included a reduced group rate that O’Daniel negotiated with Comfort Suites.

Softball might be a favorite pastime for Southern families but it isn’t a cheap one.
Jeff Rippy, the parent of a player on a south-central Kentucky team, dropped an estimated $250 during the tournament.  The Rippys stayed at the Holiday Inn and ate at O’Charley’s. 

Rippy said he was prepared to spend even more. He intended to take one of his children who was not playing in the tournament over to the Family Aquatic Center, just a short walk from the Tie Breaker softball complex. It was only because his daughter’s team made it to the championship game in the 16-and-under group, that the plan had to be nixed.

“My son won’t let me forget about that one for a long time,” Rippy joked.

The aquatic center, which is now well-known among softball teams around the state, is a bonus to this highly coveted facility.

“Nobody has five fields this nice,” Rippy said, admiring the diamonds at Tie Breaker. Comparing softball sites seen over his 17 years in travel league experience, Rippy called Tie Breaker a top-three facility.

Couple that with Ruff Park, and Hopkinsville is positioned to draw major events every weekend. In all, USGF has scheduled seven of its tournaments in Hopkinsville through the summer and fall.

Tom O'Daniel, the United Southern Girls Fastpitch Kentucky director, updates the brackets with results from the Western Kentucky State Tournament in June

O’Daniel actually prefers Ruff Park to Tie Breaker because of its classic look. “It’s like Wrigley Field,” O’Daniel said. “It’s an older facility but not rundown or unsafe.”  O’Daniel raved about the groundskeeping by local recreation volunteers. “They people will come out here and rechalk the field six or seven times per day,” O’Daniel said. “Most places only do it once.”

When Hopkinsville was hit with record rain a few months ago, O’Daniel was preparing himself to cancel a May 15 tournament at Ruff Park. But local groundskeepers tarped the field and the event went ahead as scheduled.

The USGF has been expanding rapidly since it broke away from the United States Fastpitch Association a few years ago. The number of USGF sanctioned teams in Kentucky jumped from 20 to 60 this year alone.

What could cause such a surge?

The announcement that for the first time Kentucky softball parks host USGF tournaments, O’Daniel said. Previously, tournaments were almost exclusively in Tennessee.

By using Hopkinsville’s facilities as a strategic selling point, O’Daniel was able to persuade league powers that Kentucky was perfectly capable of hosting its own events. In-state tournaments have also been held this year in Draffenville and Elizabethtown, Ky.
Out-of-staters are just as eager to enter Kentucky tournaments. Caldwell said she will definitely bring her four teams up from Tennessee again.

“USGF runs their events so smoothly. Everyone here knows what they’re doing,” Caldwell said.

The USGF World Series will be held in Jackson, Tenn. on July 18-25. The league’s next tournament in Hopkinsville is the Backwood Barbie Bash scheduled for Aug. 7-8.
More information is available at www.usgfp.com.