Tourney leader looking for help

The 2007 tournament is expected to nearly double from 2006.
By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
VIENNA -- The organizer of the PONY Fastpitch Softball National Championships locally said lots of people are making money off his efforts to put the Mahoning Valley on the travel softball map -- except him.
Now he's hoping that Trumbull and Mahoning County officials will help ensure a future for the tournament locally by helping with some of its costs.
David Anderson, general manager of the Thunderplex indoor-outdoor softball and baseball facility on state Route 193 and the tournament organizer, said PONY officials have agreed to expand the national tournament again in 2007, but they also have asked him to expand the organizational structure that runs the tournament and change the housing arrangements.
Anderson said the 2006 tournament featured 186 teams from 38 states and Canada playing on 31 fields at seven baseball complexes with 14,000 athletes, coaches, families and fans at eight sites. He estimates the tournament generated as much as 14 million in revenue to area businesses.
Anderson blames bad publicity as one reason he hasn't made money off the tournament. For example, press reports indicated that certain security officers had not been paid on time for their work last summer at about the time his bank took foreclosure action on the Thunderplex.
Bad publicity
Though Anderson said short-term cash-flow problems are responsible for the actions, the publicity seems to have caused business at the Thunderplex to drop off and for hotels and other businesses that owe him money to refuse to pay. If everyone would have paid what Anderson is owed, he would have earned a small profit on the 2006 tournament, he said.
Anderson acknowledges the first two years of the tournament have been difficult. In addition to the foreclosure, the company that installed fencing at the Thunderplex sued him for 16,350, and the village of Lordstown sued over the 7,000 he owes for use of Lordstown fields last year.
In all, Anderson said he still owes about 40,000 for expenses associated with the 2006 tournament. He added that he is still recovering from the 250,000 he spent in 2005 to upgrade fields.
The tournament, which began here in 2005 and expanded in 2006, will go from nine days to two weeks and involve nearly twice as many teams as in 2006. Anderson said the 2007 tournament will include two new divisions, which would add more than 100 teams in the under-18-year-old division and a smaller number in a new division for under-8-year-olds.
But Anderson said the tournament is too big for him to run by himself. He, PONY officials and Trumbull and Mahoning County commissioners met last summer to discuss the future of the tournament.
The result, Anderson said, is that instead of asking for a 50,000 low-interest loan from Trumbull County and local banks again this year, he hopes to get a different type of help from both counties, perhaps using tourism money. He's asking them to take care of one of his expenses: the estimated 70,000 cost of housing umpires.
Anderson said that support is needed because he will be losing one of his revenue streams from last year -- a 5-per-night surcharge he received on hotel accommodations made through a housing service that worked with 30 hotels.
The housing service proved unpopular and is being eliminated because it limited the number of hotels that could be used, Anderson said. It caused some teams to stay as far away as Cranberry, Pa., and Beachwood, Ohio. This year, teams will be able to book rooms anywhere they want, Anderson said, and that will open up more hotels closer to the fields.
Good location
Jim Arends, an assistant zone director for PONY, said the organization has been thrilled with the tournaments held here the past two years, especially the treatment the visiting families have received from the local residents.
"Your people have been great," Arends said, especially complimenting the way the under-10 division girls were treated in Niles and the way Warren Mayor Michael O'Brien and city employees took ownership of tournament games at Packard and Perkins parks.
"We'd like to come back," Arends said, adding that housing, meal and other costs are lower here than at other locations. The one complaint was the driving distance from some of the hotels, he said. Games were played at the Thunderplex and sites in Warren, Niles, Lordstown, Liberty and New Middletown.
Arends, from North Carolina, said tournament officials also would like to see Anderson form a committee to help him run the tournament, because it is a lot of work for one person. In most places, tournaments are run by a committee, he said.
Arends said he also hopes government will assist with the effort. "We bring a heck of a lot of money to your community, including the governments, because of the taxing," Arends said, adding that he hopes that officials will see the tournament as a way to encourage commerce.
Trumbull County Commissioner Paul Heltzel said he supports the tournament because of the economic benefits it brings to the area. But whatever request Anderson makes to the county must make sense from a risk standpoint, he said. Heltzel refused to make a second 50,000 loan to Anderson last year on the grounds that the loan wasn't a good risk for the county.
He said Anderson must also "clean up his finances" to receive support for his new funding idea and make sure that the funding is allowed under the county tourism bureau's bylaws.
Mahoning commissioners could not be reached to comment.
The 2007 tournament is scheduled to run from July 19-26 and July 29-Aug. 4.
runyan@vindy.com