PORT HURON — Local organizers of a national men’s softball tournament said spectators will be in for quite a show when teams from across the country descend into Port Huron this weekend for the Blue Water Fastpitch Invitational.
They also said it’s a chance to show off the Blue Water Area to visitors and add momentum and enthusiasm to the return of post-pandemic community softball at Pine Grove Park.
“I would probably save about 100 (hotel) rooms or more,” said Kurt Schieman, who’s directing the fastpitch tourney — with six ISC, elite-level teams for the three-day event starting at 5 p.m. Friday. “… I have people flying in that are fans. Like one couple’s coming from Texas. They’re getting a hotel room. I had another guy, just went to a wedding, and he’s driving into town from Lansing. I got people all over Canada that are coming, that are going to spend money in our area. These guys, they follow it.”
After another tournament in New York backed out, Schieman said he was approached about taking a weekend event on in Port Huron about four months ago.
He’d been involved with the Blue Water Invitational, a past tourney well-known locally for being held on July 4, for several years after its founders Jim Ladensack and Lew Secory.
Now, being able to “bring in the best talent” was a big deal with six listed teams from around the U.S. coming in and representatives of 10 different countries among them.
“The neat part is, and I’ve got to get the word out on it, on Monday, when the tournament’s over, at noon, I have New Zealand’s national team coming into town to scrimmage the Gremlins,” Schieman said.
Midland takes on Ohio’s Bombers in the first game Friday with two others to follow at 7 and 9 p.m. Six games are on the schedule for Saturday every two hours starting at 10 a.m. The final two and a championship game are set for Sunday. The NY Gremlins taking on the New Zealand team on Monday.
“We were able to get all the games in except there’s going to be one overflow game because these teams have got to fly back to their respective places,” Schieman said. “So, we’ve got one game at Beach Road on Sunday.”
Those interested in attending nay were encouraged to visit the Blue Water Fastpitch Invitational’s page on Facebook for more.
Glimpsing the return of a community pastime — at the highest speeds
Schieman had some help putting things together for this weekend’s tourney, pointing to Chuck Ouellette, who he said was “going to do the score, you know, announcing the players,” while also having Ladensack and Secory “from back in the day” throw the invitational’s first pitch.
The organizer also pointed to Brian Larsen, who helped bring in umpires from out of town for the weekend.
Like Schieman, Larsen, too, has a years-long background with local softball.
After dissolution of softball through the Port Huron Competitive Sports Association, the city of Port Huron brought Larsen in in late 2021 to help bring back and expand the sport. His gig as softball director, paid with a boost in federal COVID stimulus funds, got things going for a year before, Larsen said, the city took the program over. Since then, he said he and Terry Ruff, a past director of the former PHCSA, also helped start a Tuesday/Thursday modified softball league at Pine Grove run through district 14 of USA Softball.
“Modified softball is really big in our area, and it’s a style of fastpitch softball where the pitching is easier. ... And we used to have a Fourth of July tournament here for several years that would get a thousand people at Pine Grove Park watching softball for the weekend,” Larsen said, referring to the Blue Water Invitational. “We’ve had a couple of the full fastpitch tournaments where we’ve had a lot of out-of-town teams and usually one local team.”
With this weekend’s invitational, Larsen said that the out-of-town teams coming to play were some of “the best teams in the world.” As an umpire in charge, he said he’d be there to help with the schedule and step in for a game or two if needed.
Like Schieman, Larsen said he was of the community for “stepping up and doing this” event, recalling inquiries from people asking about tourneys of the past at Pine Grove.
“And the pitching is the top-tier,” he said. “So, anybody who used to come to the Fourth of July and watch modified and think it was a good game, they’re going to be blown away by this game.”
Schieman also referenced the pitching levels.
“The top-three ranked pitchers are going to be here,” he said. “The equivalent of the fastpitch fastball is like 106-mile-an-hour reaction times, like the 106-mie-an-hour baseball. So, it gets on you quick.”
“If there’s room,” Schieman added, “I would recommend sitting behind home plate the whole game just to see the movement on the ball, see the speed.”
Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com.
