‘Well-received’ state tournaments conclude at Majestic Park
Hundreds of baseball and softball fans descended upon Majestic Park this past weekend for the Class 5A state baseball and softball tournaments.
Hosted by Lakeside at Majestic Park, 32 teams took to the field for at least one game from Thursday through Sunday with all but four teams getting to play at the facility. Four of Thursday’s first-round baseball games were played at Lakeside while the remainder of the baseball and all softball games were held at Majestic Park.
Majestic Park General Manager Derek Phillips said Saturday that the park had large crowds the first two days of the tournament.
“We’re expecting bigger crowds for the semifinals, both baseball and softball for 5A, and everyone I’ve talked to has been really pleased with everything,” he said. “Parking was a little crazy here in the day because it’s busier here in our area, but it worked. We had a really huge crowd Thursday and Friday, so I feel really good about it. … So I feel like it’s been really well received. And I feel really good about it right now. I hope everybody else does when they leave for the weekend.”
The high school baseball and softball tournaments came on the heels of the Great American Conference Baseball Championships held May 7-10, leaving the park’s staff with just a day to prepare for the Class 5A tournaments.
“It’s a lot of hours in a week, but that’s what we’re here for,” Phillips said. “We’re a baseball park, so it’s gonna be like that during baseball season.
But we all feel really confident we can handle these kinds of events. Like you said, we had the GAC Championship; they left here really happy. The teams were very happy with the park and how everything worked.
“And I’ll say this, too, the GAC and Lakeside, who’s the host for this tournament, provided so much help. It really eased what was a lot of work for this stretch. … Both those organizations were a ton of help and really what allowed us to get through it without being too wore out.”
The Class 5A state baseball and softball tournaments were the third big tournament Majestic Park has hosted since it opened in January, but Phillips said that there has been something going on almost every weekend.
“We’ve had a tournament every weekend, and a lot of those are just, you know, week-in, week-out travel tournaments,” he said. “In the summer, we’ve got a state tournament for our 5- and 6-year-olds, which will be so much fun, and then we have a state tournament for 8- and 9-year-olds, a regional tournament, which includes Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma; it’s pretty good tournament. And then after that is the 16-18 USSSA World Series.
“We’ve got some big tournaments in the middle of the summer. Our fall request is booked from mid August through Halloween basically, or deer season. Baseball will probably really shut down during deer season.”
Phillips said that the past week has also shown some things that they will look to improve going forward as well.
“I think we’ve seen some things where we could probably make some changes in our seating that will help,” he said. “The seating has been fine. It’s hot for the high school tournament, so we probably need some shade over a little more seating. Our fans work great; when I say fans I mean our ceiling fans. They really do help in that shade. But really just mostly media accommodations. But again, the GAC had their, you know, that tournament on TV, and they were so pleased and thrilled with what we set up for them inside our grandstand down here at the Babe Ruth Field.”
Looking ahead, Phillips said that he hopes to see more high school and college teams playing at the field next season.
“We got calls every week during the high school season for teams that want to come over here and play because if their fields are wet, you know ours aren’t,” he said. “So we’ll probably do a lot more high school stuff next year. And so, you know, I think as we do these tournaments and people see that we did a good job, we’ll get that much more. And our partners at Champion Christian and National Park, they’ll be wanting to bring their conference tournaments here, too, if they can get them, so I think we’ll just continue to grow … because things are going really good. People like to play here. It’s a really cool setting.”