Volunteers, donors saved the tourney

Editor,

Last weekend Ronan hosted the District Cal Ripken (12-year old), District 13 Preps and District Babe Ruth tournaments. Fourteen teams in all provided exciting youth baseball played with outstanding sportsmanship while hoping to win a ticket to state tournaments.

Many individuals and organizations were instrumental in making it happen. It started with a donation of over 10 yards of field material by Treasure State Concrete to prep the fields. After the tournament started Thursday night, we were forced to suspend play due to heavy rain that continued most of the night. Early the next morning, the fields looked hopeless, with standing water covering most of Field 2.

Sure enough, soon Cal Hardy and Brad Benson (with his tractor) appeared and began work on the fields, not long after, Karey Reynolds showed up with his Bobcat, soon joined by the City of Ronan, Mark Clary and Dave Marmon with a huge front end loader. We now had the equipment but needed additional dry sand. Joe Yaqui, working on a construction site at Salish Kootenai College asked Crockett construction if they would donate sand to the ball field and we soon had 10 more yards of dry sand, expertly spread by the volunteers. Between 6 and 9:30 a.m., more than 13 yards of sand were applied to the fields to make them playable. By 11 a.m., it was "Play ball!"

Friday night Ronan hosted all the teams and their families to a barbecue donated by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Ronan Dairy Queen, Wal-Mart of Polson, Dr. Tim Dumontier and Harvest Foods of Ronan. We thank them all for their support as well as Carole Lankford for her welcoming address, Christa Salomon for her outstanding presentation of the National Anthem, Paula Webster for her hard work on the concessions, Alan and Kelly Anderson for their hard work and all the volunteers who prepped and lined fields, kept home books and worked in concessions.

Bob Gauthier, President

Mission Mountain Cal Ripken

Ronan