Rain postpones first day of tournament|[07/07/07]

Published 12:00 am Saturday, July 7, 2007

A Friday morning rainstorm did a number on the Halls Ferry Park baseball fields, leaving them too wet for the Cal Ripken 10-year-olds’ state tournament to start.

Tournament director Stan Lee postponed all tournament games set for Friday. The 11-team, double-elimination tournament will try to get started at 10 a.m. today with one of the tourney’s host teams, the Vicksburg Mustangs, taking on George County.

The Vicksburg Red Sox (31-13) will meet Orange Grove at noon. Action will continue through a 4 p.m. game between Oak Grove and the winner of the Orange Grove-Red Sox game.

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&#8220Stan basically pushed everything back a day. The games that were scheduled for Friday will be played (today) and the Saturday games will be played Sunday,” said assistant tournament director Kim Magoun. &#8220We’ll just have to play the rain by ear. It’s supposed to rain again (Friday night).”

Little work was done on the fields which were soaked by the heavy Friday morning rains. Most teams spent the day getting in extra batting practice in the various hitting cages around Halls Ferry Park.

&#8220We supposedly have got some turf dry available to us. We have had a lot of the players’ families asking what they can do to help. We even had one grandparent from Bay St. Louis say they would bring up some turf dry, but Joe Graves informed us they have some,” Magoun said.

Graves is the Vicksburg Parks and Recreation Director.

Only three of the 11 teams are not housed in Vicksburg hotels. The District 1 champs from Corinth-Alcorn County made the longest trip to the river city. Bay St. Louis, Orange Grove and George County make up the coast contigent, while there are two teams from Meridian and another from Prentiss.

One game in the Cal Ripken 7-year-olds’ state tournament was completed Friday. Brandon defeated the Vicksburg Tide 9-6 in Brandon. The loss sent the Tide into the losers’ bracket.

Two other Ripken state tournaments are being played on the coast, with the 12-year-olds at Helena and the 11s at Gulfport.

The Vicksburg Titans and Vicksburg Venom are in Brandon for the 9-year-olds’ state tournament.