A beautiful day for baseball ... and for honoring an old friend of local baseball

Apr. 29—BLUEFIELD — Following Friday's break in the action to accommodate accurately-anticipated inclement weather, the 49th Annual Coppinger Invitational baseball tournament is slated to resume and ultimately conclude today at Bowen Field.

All three games will now be played in Bluefield, since neither Hunnicutt Field in Princeton nor PikeView's home field in Gardner are expected to be in playable shape.

The seventh-place game between Bluefield and Graham will start things off at 10 a.m. at Bowen Field. The championship game between Tazewell and Woodrow Wilson is set to follow at 12:30 p.m. The team and individual awards ceremony will be held following the conclusion of the championship game, after which Princeton and PikeView will take to the field to settle the fifth-place game at 3 p.m.

""It's looking good. We might be 30 minutes delayed on the first game, pulling the tarp and everything, but once we get the tarp up, we'll be ready to roll,: said Coppinger Invitational Director Justin Gilbert, who noted that beautiful baseball weather is expected.

"It's supposed to be in the 60s tomorrow ... and sunny," he said.

The Bulldogs have a long history with the Coppinger and have won multiple tournament titles at Bowen Field. The Flying Eagles are this year's surprise contender, having beaten Graham, PikeView and Richlands en route to the finals. Tazewell beat Princeton, Bluefield and sealed the title shot by outlasting persistent Marion 11-10 in 11 innings.

"For a lot of teams, the tradition of this tournament is still important. You still have enough coaches out there who don't view it as merely another week of games ... they view it as an historical tournament that they're trying to win," said Gilbert.

"Sometimes it brings out a little extra in people."

Given Tazewell's long history with the Coppinger, Gilbert is inclined to denote the Bulldogs as today's favorite. He observed that, traditionally, Virginia opponents have carried a slight advantage over West Virginia opponents into the tournament by virtue of the VHSL's more limited regular season schedules.

"In Virginia they're limited to 20 games. In West Virginia, they can play up to 32 games. When the Virginia schools come in, all of their pitching is ready for the Coppinger ... where a lot of my West Virginia schools are playing games on their off-days," said Gilbert.

That's what helps the Virginia schools. They have devoted a week of their season to [the Coppinger], so they're locked and loaded for it. A lot of West Virginia schools are trying to fit it in. I don't mean that in a bad way ... but there's only so much pitching to go around," he said.

This year's team and individual awards ceremony will memorialize the Coppinger's longtime association with the late Jeff Boyles, naming the tournament MVP award after the longtime coach and Coppinger director.

"We always put together an All-Coppinger Team of 12 individuals along with an MVP. So this year, I've renamed the MVP the Jeff Boyles Award," Gilbert said.

According to local sports history buff Larry Hypes, who'll be on hand at today's award ceremony, Boyles' lengthy association with the Coppinger was uncommonly constant.

"The late Jeff Boyles played in the first Coppinger Tournament in 1974, was an assistant baseball coach for Bluefield's Tom Ferrell in the early 1980s for several Beavers teams who participated in the tournament and and was a director in the Coppinger Invitational for 30 years, from 1992 until his passing in 2022," wrote Hypes.

"He worked with Coach John Chmura, who organized the event, and with the late Allen G. Coppinger, for whom the event is named. He was annually involved in every phase of the tournament, working with Tony Colobro, Ergie Smith, Glynn Carlock, Lou Peery, George McGonagle, Rocky Malamisura and current director Justin Gilbert, among others," Hypes wrote.

Gilbert credited Boyles for properly grooming him to eventually assume the reins of the Coppinger directorship.

"He was with me last year ... he wasn't around at the tournament site but we talked every evening about different things [related to the tournament]. He passed away shortly after the tournament," Gilbert said.

"This is someone who was associated with the Coppinger every decade it's existed. Now there may have been short periods where he was away for a short while — like while at college, perhaps — but he was basically intertwined with the Coppinger Invitational from 1974 until 2022.

"That says something," Gilbert reflected.

— Contact sports@bdtonline.com