WILLIAMSTON — The phrase “play ball!” has never been more welcomed than it was on Thursday as the Tarheel League District 7 8U, 10U and 12U All-Stars tournament resumed after being postponed for three straight days due to thunderstorms.
Steve Barnes, who has been a tournament director for 12 years, said that he has never been a part of a tourney that has taken such a long timeout.
“This is the first time I have ever had to deal with something like this,” Barnes said. “In every other district tournament I normally have one night (postponed), but I have never had it for three days. It’s unbelievable. Yesterday I thought we might not ever finish.”
On Thursday Barnes was thrilled to be playing ball again and so were all the participants.
“I’m tickled to death, I have been fighting this rain for three days and am happy as can be to have it back on,” Barnes said. “Everybody seems to be just as happy as I am. I’ve had no negative responses from anybody and that’s always good. Everybody understood.”
While the weather held up on Thursday, so did the fields at Kehukee Park, something Barnes and his crew worked hard to achieve.
“Everything held up good,” Barnes said. “We’ve had a crowd out here pretty much the whole day working on the fields. They dragged the fields and everything was dry.”
On those fields, the Washington 12U All-Stars (2-1) were able to fight off elimination with a victory over Ahoskie (1-2), while West Martin battled Jamesville in a game that ended past deadline. (The 10U Washington-Plymouth matchup, along with the 8U Jamesville-Williamston contest and the Chocowinty-West Martin game also ended past deadline.)
In the 10U division, Jamesville (2-1) avoided a fateful second loss as it downed Ahoskie (1-2).
In the 8U division, Ahoskie (1-1) topped Belhaven (1-2) and Chocowinity (2-1) downed West Martin (1-2).
Though the rain muddied up the tournament schedule, Barnes said if all goes well the rest of the way the event should come to a conclusion this weekend.
“I think we will be good, I don’t think we will be getting any more rain,” Barnes said. “The way the schedule is set up now is that the championship game for all the divisions will be Sunday. The only way we will go into Monday is if we have an ‘if’ game. If there is an ‘if’ game that will be played Monday night.”