1850 Prospect Drive, Marion, IA 52302    |    319.582.4471

Shop Our Store!
Shop Our Store!
×

70 Teams coming for PG Tournaments

June 23, 2021 | Angela Jordan

MW Select Preview

The two big Perfect Game baseball tournaments at Prospect Meadows this week will create a lot of work for a lot of people, but that’s a very good thing.

A total of 70 teams are headed to Prospect Meadows for the WWBA Midwest Elite Championships, with 38 teams in the 15U event and another 32 teams in the 16U bracket.

The two tournaments will run from Thursday night through Monday afternoon and will feature 201 games, with 191 of those games at Prospect Meadows and 10 others at Mount Mercy University.

Friday and Saturday will be the busiest days, with the first game each day starting at 8 a.m. and the last game beginning at 9:30 p.m. That’s a lot of work for umpires, concession stand workers, gate keepers, golf cart drivers, maintenance crews and administrators.

“It will be a busy weekend, that’s for sure,” remarked Steve James, the general manager at Prospect Meadows. “There will be some long days.”

The 70 teams in the two tournaments are from 10 states with Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota and Wisconsin represented. There are no teams from Iowa, because Iowa high school players are busy with their high school seasons and are not playing travel ball right now.

Jack Roeder, the president and CEO at Prospect Meadows, thinks all those teams – players, coaches, umpires, scouts and parents – will fill approximately 1,500 hotel room nights during their visit. They call that “Heads in Beds,” and it creates a huge economic impact.

Roeder says filling 1,000 hotel rooms creates a $1 million impact in the community, so 1,500 beds would figure to generate about $1.5 million for the economy and serve as a big boost for restaurants, convenience stores, shops and the hotels themselves.

The Perfect Game events this weekend will be the largest at Prospect Meadows this year so far, but Perfect Game will be staging other events here this summer and fall with as many as 100 teams.

Angela Jordan