Logansport wins inaugural Turner/Jones Memorial Tournament
Jul. 21—A team consisting of next year's Logansport varsity baseball team won the inaugural Jim Turner/Butch Jones Memorial Tournament this past weekend at Turner Field.
Logansport went 3-1 on the weekend. In the bracket round, Logan defeated the West Side Raiders from Ohio 6-4 and avenged an earlier loss to the Mid State Mash out of Illinois with a 13-7 win in the championship game.
Izak Mock pitched a four-hit complete game in the semifinal, striking out seven. Jeremiah Miller went 3-for-3 with an RBI triple and two runs scored. Isaac Russell went 2-for-2 with three runs scored. Jacob Fincher and Deagan Kitchel each added a hit.
Brennan Goforth and Tristan Kitchel combined for the win in the championship game. Goforth had a triple, single and four RBIs at the plate. Mock had two hits and two RBIs. Fincher had two hits and two runs scored. Russell had a triple, two RBIs and three runs scored. Dylan Pearson, Cooper Smith and Bodie Jones each had a hit. Tate Strong added an RBI.
Logansport coach Dan Frye said the tournament gave the coaches another look at next year's varsity team. He said the team has competed well in weekend tournaments this summer despite not practicing due to the athletes also having workouts with their other sports teams.
He's looking to host the tournament again next year.
"We hope to continue it. I'm not sure exactly what direction we're going to go next year," he said.
Logansport also annually host the Chad Lambert Memorial Tournament in the summer.
The Turner/Jones Memorial Tournament was an 18U tournament with several recent high school graduates playing. But Logansport's team consists of players that are still in high school.
Logan has one more tournament to play in this summer, the Fort Wayne Classic this weekend. It's a wooden bat tournament that will be held at the World Baseball Academy in Fort Wayne.
"We're so grateful that we had some donations to purchase some bats for the boys," Frye said.
He said he's not sure what next summer's baseball schedule might look like as some changes could be made. Issues that he's ran into are the athletes being busy with other sports and the cost of playing in travel baseball tournaments.
"If some kids want to play every weekend — we have some kids that are baseball first — if they want to play every weekend I'm not sure we're going to be able to provide that to them. Last year we played six tournaments, this year we cut it back to five, we started a week later," Frye said. "At this point coach Gleitz and I have gone and hit up local businesses for donations to the baseball program and they have been fantastic. They've been fantastic over the last two years donating money to us to purchase the baseballs, to purchase padding for the bullpens, to pay for the umpires, to all the entry fees.
"The cheapest tournament that we play in is $1,200. You're guaranteed maybe three or four games. Most of them are four games at that price, the only way you play more is if you win obviously. This tournament that we're going to in Fort Wayne, it was $1,300 to get in the tournament and we spent another $700 with Titan Bats to get bats for the boys to use. We've got $2,000 wrapped up in what potentially is four games, $500 a game is what we're paying to play essentially this weekend. Most weekends it's a little less than that. We've gone to Grand Park this year to see what that's all about.
"Our team fits in with these travel tournaments. I'm not sure I like the travel stuff as far as that goes, that's just my personal opinion. I hate the fact that it's affecting our local youth leagues and there's no other answer to it other than it affects our local youth. It's taking talent away from our youth leagues and the numbers are dropping drastically. I go to these travel tournaments at Grand Park and there's 23 baseball fields and there's 83 baseball teams coming in from whatever age, teams from Canada, teams from Georgia. And I get it, but to me it's a money-making machine.
"Coach Gleitz and I decided when we got this started that we'll keep it at minimal expense for the families. We were able to get it done for each player, parents and families are paying $200 to play in these tournaments. We put a lot of the responsibility on the business to help us go. We guaranteed them that we wanted to coach these kids and get a look at what we have coming back for next year and that we were going to do it for free. I know a lot of travel coaches get paid. This was not what this was all about. This was about keeping our kids together, giving our kids an opportunity to go play together and play in these travel tournaments.
"But what I've seen out there is we're right where everybody else is."
At the same time Logansport hosted the Turner/Jones Memorial Tournament, there were games from the Greater Lafayette World Series being hosted at Turner Field. Frye said there were a total of six games being played there every day from Thursday to Sunday, with the first game of the day starting at 8:30 a.m. and the last game of the day starting at 7:45 p.m. He said hosting tournaments is another way for him to raise money for his summer program.
He said it's tough to organize a summer schedule with several of the athletes also being busy with sports like football and basketball.
"We may go a different route. We may only have a few tournaments. We may only host a couple tournaments," Frye said. "Coach Gleitz and I are still trying to figure out the timing of everything, how much is too much. Obviously we have three-sport athletes that are doing way too much in the summer. It's nuts what us coaches are trying to ask these kids to do all the time. We haven't figured out the balance yet."
