Business owners praise PONY

Some hotels reported
having their best weeks
of the year.

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF

Hotels, restaurants and other businesses across the Mahoning Valley are singing the praises of the PONY Fastpitch Softball National Championships that were played in Mahoning and Trumbull counties for two weeks.

“We were up 50 percent in our baseball categories during those two weeks,” said Rick Jenkins, store manager of Dick’s Sporting Goods in Niles, referring to the amount of business the store did compared with the same two weeks last year.

The tournament ended Saturday.

Jenkins said the store was used as the registration location thanks to its affiliation with the tournament, and that helped draw additional customers and resulted in 20 of his employees working more hours than usual.

The tournament participants and their families came in for cleats, clothes, bats, gloves and a variety of other items, Jenkins said.

Economic lift

Ashok Patel, owner of the Quality Inn on Belmont Avenue in Liberty and three other area hotels, said the tournament provided his hotels with their two biggest weeks so far this year and was a great economic lift.

Few rooms were available during those two weeks in any of his hotels, and 11 of his 22 full-time employees at Quality Inn worked overtime during the period. “It was great for business,” he added.

Visitor traffic

The Boardman-Canfield area especially saw an increase in visitor traffic as PONY games moved to those areas for the first time.

Dave Kelleck, managing partner of Outback Steakhouse on Tiffany Boulevard in Boardman, said business was way up in his restaurant. The Niles location also had a lot of business, he added.

The tournament brought lots of families into the restaurant, vehicles painted with softball-related messages, and children walking from the nearby hotels to other nearby businesses, such as the Handel’s Ice Cream store, Kelleck said.

“I’m excited for it for next year,” he said, adding that he has marked the dates for next year so he makes sure to add staffing. “That sure is a real nice boost to our economy.”

The two weeks this year will rank among the top four or five weeks of the year and probably the best two weeks of the summer, he said.

Mike Moliterno, general manager of the nearby Holiday Inn Boardman, said the second week of the tournament will rank as the busiest week of the year. “It was just great,” he said, adding that the hotels in Liberty, where he lives, were also full.

Tournament games

Games were played at Field of Dreams in Boardman, McCune Park in Canfield, Perkins Park in Warren, and baseball complexes in Liberty and Lordstown.

A new body composed of members of the nonprofit Boardman Community Baseball and Thunder Elite Fastpitch Inc. organized the tournament this year after David Anderson, general manager of the Thunderplex in Vienna, ran it the first two years.

Tony Provenzale, one of the new tournament organizers this year and project coordinator for Boardman Community Baseball, said the organizers will meet with PONY officials in the coming weeks to discuss next year’s tournament.

Before that, organizers will analyze which age groups worked out best at the local facilities and offer a proposal to keep those parts. A decision from PONY on the age groups coming back next year should be made by September, he said.

Surplus profit

This year’s tournament included 81 teams in the 10-and-under and 12-and-under age brackets the first week playing at the Boardman and Canfield sites, and 160 teams in the 16-and-under and 18-and-under brackets the second week at all five locations.

Provenzale said final financial numbers are not in yet, but he is certain the tournament brought in more money than it spent.

The surplus will be put into the baseball fields where the games were played, he said, noting that playing 300 games per week on the Boardman and Canfield ball fields produced some wear and tear.

Stephanie Sferra, director of the Trumbull County Tourism Bureau, said the bureau is certain that the tournament will return for at least one week next year, but it is possible the second week could be eliminated. “A two-week tournament was hard on the volunteers” who ran it, she said, noting that many of them had to use vacation time from work to help at the event.

runyan@vindy.com