Dust Will Fly At National Softball Event

As the Spokane Amateur Softball Association and Franklin Park prepare to serve as hosts for the Women’s Modified National Softball Tournament this weekend , there is a wide-eyed excitement being felt by some local organizers and players.

However, some folks will be blinking - most likely from the dust in their eyes.

You see, Franklin Park is to softball fields what the old Spokane Coliseum was to modern athletic arenas.

It is painfully outdated.

“They’re not the worst fields I’ve played on, but they’re not the best, either,” said Andrea Zacher of Team Spokane.

Team Spokane will be one of this city’s best hopes for winning the national crown.

“For a national tournament, I don’t feel proud that we are hosting one with the quality of fields that are around.”

Franklin Park’s infields are a sand-based mixture that generates an inordinate amount of dust. Bring plenty of water and tear-drops to the park.

With just five fields built between 1968 and 1979, parks like Franklin don’t typically find themselves hosting national tournaments these days. Though it is the site of the women’s modified tourney, the participation level in that form of the game has been dropping nationwide.

Today, 89 percent of all softball played in the United States falls under the category of slowpitch and coed.

Even though the Spokane Metro Softball Association maintains 31 softball fields around town, there is not one major complex able to accommodate a national slowpitch or coed classification tournament.

“This year, we lost our top slowpitch league to Post Falls,”said Pat Dalsanders, an SMSA volunteer. “Its big softball complex had the time and space to accommodate them better.”

Although there has been an increase in popularity in softball in Spokane, new teams have been turned away from the SMSA because the association couldn’t accommodate all of them.

In 1990 the SMSA registered 238 teams. This year, 261 teams were registered while 50 more were turned away.

, DataTimes