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Crandall Baseball Tournament Strikes Out |
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by Dan Veaner
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Friday, 22 June 2007 |
This year's Lyle Crandall Memorial Baseball Tournament would have been held last week, but Lansing's Recreation Director Steve Colt says it had to be canceled because there weren't enough teams to fill it. "All our field logistics were done, schedules were made, the program was done," Colt told the Town Board at their Wednesday meeting. " We're in the process of writing letters and returning payments to our generous donors. Trophies had been ordered. Prizes for our home run derby had been ordered. We had to back down on a lot of things. We waited until the last minute to try to pull it off, but the teams weren't there."
 The Lansing Gold was last year's winning team
This year would have been the 14th year the tournament was held in Lansing. Named for a local sports enthusiast who also was involved in building the town's athletic fields, the tournament attracted teams from neighboring municipalities including Dryden, Groton, Trumansburg, and Ithaca in the past. But Colt says that a number of factors contributed to the cancellation this year.
"There's a strong sentiment among parents and players," Colt says. "As life becomes more complicated... as many more choices are available to kids now than there were years ago, people really don't like to get tied up on the weekends for long periods of time. Our tournament is a four day tournament that starts on a Thursday."
Colt says that many of the teams that have participated in the past no longer want to play, or can't. Groton no longer plays. Colt says Trumansburg chose not to play this year because they didn't feel they were competitive enough, and that South Seneca wasn't ready.. Ithaca joined the Cal Ripkin league, which conducts in-house playoffs and tournaments that conflicted with the Lansing tournament dates. "I had several people who were verbally committed to play," Colt says. "They called me back and said, 'We're going to have to beg off.' So you get into the situation where you just don't have the teams to play."
Colt says he could have found teams to fill out the tournament if he had gone as far afield as Rochester, Syracuse and Binghamton. But the high cost of gas is another limiting factor, along with the distance players would have to travel over the four days of the tournament. And he says that baseball also competes with year-'round soccer and other sports.
He notes that other communities are having trouble filling their teams. When he spoke to the Skaneateles Recreation Director he was told that only 14 kids tried out for 12 and under baseball this year. While Lansing has two 12 and under and two ten and under teams, the problem is finding others to play against.
"It really is not a surprise," Colt says. "The simple answer is that teams don't want to come in and play, or can't come in and play. I don't know what the answer is. We can look at changing our date next year, but the other thing we have to contend with is the sentiment that a lot of people don't want to play on the weekends."
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