Regarding Geography: Why The HWL Will Not Be Participating In The 2015 NWLA Tournament
In early 2012 I took a trip to Washington D.C. to meet up with Chris Gallaway of the Potomac Wiffleball League. My old league in Hurricane, WV had folded for good the previous summer. I retired as commissioner of a league after I failed to get it to grow after 10 years. Despite being fed up with presiding over a league I was still much in love with the sport. So, I started a wiffleball news blog called Wiffler's Digest and wrote articles from time to time for myself and for those who shared my passion. This caught Gallaway's attention and he invited me out. The trip to D.C. inspired the birth of this league and for that I owe him a great deal of gratitude. Soon after returning home, I started the HWL with Greg and about a dozen friends. The digest blog soon went on hiatus and Gallaway and Carl Coffee started chatting seriously about expanding on something I only dreamed of at the time: a national NWLA tournament. Both of them had met that summer before, in 2011, at the London Wiffleball Tournament (perhaps not for the first time, I am not entirely sure). Long story short, the two of them and a few others laid the foundation for the tournament and in 2012 the NWLA Tournament was born. Our league did not take part and would have been completely obliterated by the competition. So, I went with Greg and his stepson and took pictures and video and served as media for the inaugural year. I met a lot of people who I had spoken with online with a lot and it was nice to finally meet the who's who in the NWLA. It was amazing to witness that coming together for the first time. The following year we finally got a team together. Greg and I managed the team as non-players and the 4 person team, the Maroon Squad, were our representatives in the tournament. Two of them dropped out last-minute and Greg and I had to fill in as players so we did not have to drop out of the tournament. We got our asses handed to us the entire tournament but had a great time. We made a splash on the last day of the tournament when we accepted a forfeit from the Griffleball League when they did not arrive in time to play their game against us, giving us our only "win" of the tournament that year. The forfeit did not go over well with some people and we became pretty isolated almost immediately. Did it matter that accepting the forfeit was not my decision? Did it matter that the two players who did show up for our team had made it clear that we would accept a forfeit or they would not play? These facts do not seem to matter. The atmosphere of the tournament changed immediately and as soon as we took our inevitable next loss to PWL I got out of there. I thought, "The rules stated the tardy policy in black and white and we were ostracized for having followed the rules. Pretty bogus but maybe next year will be an improvement." So, Greg and I started spit-balling ways to build a better team on the ride home. Despite the setback and unpopular decision that defined us that tournament we were optimistic that we could redeem ourselves with new talent and possibly rehabilitate our reputation as well. So, we built a team of our best players and put a lot of thought and effort into the 2014 tournament. We endured podcasts and less than 100-word "articles" of power rankings with our league trailing at or near the end of all of them. This was fine considering there was no way we could have been worse than we were the previous year. We surprised many by finishing with a 4-3 record and making it to the second round of the double-elimination phase before being eliminated by OCWA. Reputation wise we seemed to have recuperated as well. But we had one bone to pick with the format - no pressure on offenses to swing the bat. Sure, we pitched from 45' that year and struggled to adjust. Crappy weather also no doubt affected pitching performance of a lot of teams at the tournament, not just our team. I noticed the elevation of base on balls on the first day and pointed it out that night with our required on site article. It only got worse from there as games began turning into walk-a-thons, this was something we later became vocal on and provided data and perspective for to get the conversation going. Some agreed with us but many did not feel the same way. Others felt the answer was somewhere in the middle. The debate became a little heated in public or private and no doubt annoyed some people. It was not long after the tournament an announcement declared that there were big plans for 2015. Justin Tomkins had developed a regional qualifying phase that he most likely came up with during his team's time in Golden Stick events. It was an idea I was originally in favor of since I had tinkered with the idea of developing an annual tournament for leagues in the Southeast. So, I figured this may fulfill that wish for me. The South needs injected with something like this to maybe get some attention and spawn more leagues. I immediately contacted Tomkins and picked his brain and wanted to know his vision. It was still in the early stages but coming along. You had east, south, and Midwest and someone in each region could host. The west region is pretty screwed because there are only four leagues out there and they are REALLY far apart and one of them is in Canada so a west region was definitely out. The holiday season came and went and the NWLA organizing committee began to push for people to begin signing their leagues up to return or register for the first time. Also, they were looking for leagues to register to host qualifier tournaments so that the best teams from all over make it to Columbus, not just anybody. A little exclusive but it was a pretty good idea. But I was excited to see how the South region in particular was going to develop. I was hoping leagues like Wiffle Atlanta and North Carolina Wiffle Ball League would get involved and host so we would all have a fair middle ground to play. There was no such luck. The deadline to apply for a host site was April 4th. April 1st came around the only southern league that had applied to host was Tampa Bay Wiffle League. If you are unfamiliar with Tampa's league then it is worth mentioning that they play their season in the winter months to avoid the legendary Florida summer weather. Anyone who has done any traveling throughout the southeast knows that southern humidity makes an 85 degree day feel like 95. It is brutal, man. You're drenched in sweat when go out to do something as quick and simple as getting the mail. So, I waited for someone else to register their league or another southern league to apply to host. It became clear that no one else was going to do that so I threw our league out there. We had just gotten a new site from the Greater Huntington Parks and Recreation District that was perfect for us since we no longer had to compete for the territory with other sports such as softball. So we knew we had this place to ourselves and it would suit the needs of the NWLA south qualifier just fine. I ran the idea past the recreational director of the GHPRD before I applied and he approved . So I put the application in to the NWLA Tournament committee along with bringing up several points why Tampa would not be an ideal place for this qualifier. The chief reason is the weather. It rains in Florida all the time, it's near the tropics and storms come off the ocean all the time. Plus the humidity causes a rise in precipitation because there is always so much moisture in the air. And the guys in Tampa do not even play their season in the summer months, and there is a reason for that. Here in Huntington the weather is generally more cooperative. So, why have it there? Also, it was super far away. The nearest league (Wiffle Atlanta) was nearly 7 hours away and that's not including traffic. And leagues like our own and Potomac Wiffle League were nearly double the distance away. Taking a plane was the most realistic and flying is expensive, plus renting cars, etc. A lot of the southern leagues were further north: Wiffle Atlanta, East Tennessee Wiffle, Potomac Wiffle League, Georgia's Wide World of Wiffle (I do not know specifically where they are in GA), and ourselves. While Atlanta or somewhere in North Carolina would be ideal, WiffleATL did not apply to host and NCWBL did not apply to play. So, for simple logistics I put in an application for our league to host, it would cut drive times down and Tampa has proven that they are willing to fly since they have done so for the past three years for the NWLA Tournament. Case closed, right? Apparently not. The NWLA Committee announced the locations for the four hosting sites this past Sunday. Only six leagues applied to host a regional qualifier. The NWLA committee selected St. Louis, MO (Skibbe Wiffle League), Eagan, MN (HRL Twin Cities), Kalamazoo, MI (Kalamazoo Wiffle League), and Wilkes-Barre, PA (Backyard Wiffle Ball League). The other two sites to apply were Tampa and Huntington. The first thing you notice when looking at their selection is they didn't really give a damn that these qualifiers served as REGIONAL qualifiers. There is one eastern site and THREE sites in the MIDWEST. That's right, three. Rather, than give a site to either of the potential southern hosts, they chose yet another Midwestern site. The upper Midwest is an area with high concentrations of leagues, so having two sites is not the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard - but 75% of the qualifiers taking place in the Midwest is seemingly a deliberate attempt to discourage participation from most southern leagues. Consult any geography resource or simply do a map search on Bing or Google and I assure you that almost no resources will show that Missouri is a state belonging to the American Southeast. My argument for avoiding to play the qualifier in Tampa was apparently heard but the logic of us hosting the southern region was clearly overlooked. Inclusion and efficiency of geographic regions was seemingly not on the agenda for this committee but maybe I am reading too much into the word regional. Nope, it is right there - REGIONal. That is what we call a base word. But why not have it here in Huntington, WV? Could it be because the HWL has made some waves both years we participated? It would seem so. Maybe none of the teams wanted to come to Huntington because of that reason. Maybe they wanted to drive longer to avoid being hosted by such a league that says the tournament should consider coming up with rules to curb the large amount of walks or that if a team takes a forfeit within the rules of the tournament that they not be ostracized for it. Perhaps, it is for those reasons we were not selected. But southern leagues reportedly requested St. Louis for some reason, the logic or truth behind that is something that has not been revealed to me. In the conversation I have linked it someone believes that St. Louis is the "closest one [host site] for most southern leagues #themoreyouknow." I did not realize that I had gone to college and taken geography courses and everything I learned is completely wrong. I love geography, studied maps for years, and my favorite puzzle when I was a child was a map of the United States of America where each piece was an individual state. My favorite show a few years ago: How The States Got Their Shapes on the History Channel. I read the book that inspired the show years before and it blew my mind on how locations matter. Moreover, I have written on how location influences wiffleball in an article for the NWLA website five years ago, A Lesson In Wiffle Geography. But who am I kidding? I probably have absolutely no idea what I am talking about. But hey, let us just entertain some possibilities just for fun. Let's say someone actually did the legwork and found out the average distances or drive times leagues would meet if the site for the southern leagues were somewhere other than St. Louis, Missouri. That sounds like so much work though. I mean it is not like we live in a world where infinite information is available instantaneously at our fingertips. Let me get my collection of encyclopedias and my world atlas and I will be right back... So, after literally 40 minutes on bing maps, I retrieved the following information:
I could say plenty about these findings but I will trust that everybody knows that smaller numbers for average travel/drive time equates to a higher rate of convenience to participating leagues that could fall into the southern region. PWL is included because when I talked to Justin Tomkins last year about this regional idea, PWL is considered a southern region league. Also, I have no idea where in Georgia the Georgia's Wide World of Wiffle league resides. But having visited Georgia, there is not much there that's not around Atlanta or on the Atlantic coast so I assumed the league is near Atlanta just so I could do some calculations. The numbers speak loudly for themselves. I spoke up about the site locations early after the announcements and apparently I could choose the site we go to although it seemed that Wilkes-Barre, PA would be the only logical choice with regard to geography since we are more of an eastern state than a Midwestern one. This willy nilly nature of choice of sites, late timelines for teams or the committee to make decisions less than a month before events are to take place is the thing I find the most frustrating about this year's NWLA Tournament process. The locations for the qualifiers were not announced until the deadline for teams to pay their registration fee had past. That type of bait and switch tactic is pretty lame and I do not think it will help this tournament grow, at least with respect to the southern region, anytime soon. One of the sites, Wilkes-Barre, belongs to a league (BYWBLPA) that has yet to receive a confirmation vote from this year's participants to even be able to compete in this year's qualifier. Granted, their field is freakin' awesome. But the decision to make them a host pretty much makes them a lock for the regional. Unfortunately, no other east region teams applied to host that I am aware of. But selecting St. Louis, MO as a good enough site for the south region is geographically irresponsible. I gave up being the manager of our NWLA team early this year and passed it on to Greg Sowards and Patrick Rayl. I chatted with them about the direction this tournament was going and we reached a unanimous decision to back out of the tournament. The reason(s) why we reached that decision is because we see no reason to drive 7-8 hours to qualify for a tournament less than half that distance away. It is ridiculous. We could think of no good reasons why we would not have been a logical choice to host. And we determined that in one form or another it would seem that we are not really wanted at this year's tournament or future tournaments. Maybe there were no lines to read between and we came up with that conclusion on our own. But you do start to wonder if that is not the case. Especially less than one hour after the tournament announces your team is dropping out that the tournament will be offering a stipend that will aid teams traveling over these vast distances. Convenient timing indeed. If that announcement had been made sooner it may have changed our decision. It's almost as if they were waiting for us to drop out prior to announcing such a benefit. If that was the case, well-played and you got what you wanted. I realize this article, if you have read this far, will rub some people the wrong way. Some will not get it or misinterpret the meaning behind this article. I wish everyone could understand even the slightest bit from my perspective and I understand that many will probably not and I am prepared for the criticism that will undoubtedly come after this. I realize also that this may permanently lead to us not participating in any future NWLA Tournaments. That is fine with me so long as this tournament continues down this path. If we wanted to play in Golden Stick then would we not already be doing that? I thought we wanted a one time event that we could all get together, hang out, compete with one another, and celebrate a true national champion. Why not just get a couple more fields and have more teams show up. Why cap this event at 16 teams? Why not adjust format so that the one time event could expand? Hell, if Brian Wheeler can orchestrate a 70-team tournament in one day, the NWLA Tournament committee could find a way to add 4 or more teams to current format. Sure, the London Wiffleball Tournament has faults but I can guarantee you one thing: I will be playing in London this year and will be bringing at least two teams with me to take part. I do not want this article to suggest that I want the NWLA Tournament to fail. In fact, I hope it thrives. But there is a need for a change of approach on the Southern United States or the sport will always be what it has been: a northeast and Midwest dominated game with little diversity and inclusion from the south or west. It's clear to see and easy to avoid, but the decision to not do what tournaments before them have done rests with them. Golden Stick even manages to occasionally have tournaments in Georgia. I know this is the qualifying format's first year, but so far I am not impressed. I do not claim to speak for leagues in the south, but I assure you that if you do not consider their travel time it may affect their ability to attend the event. Try meeting them halfway next year and you may grow the tournament to the level you are hoping to achieve. Best of luck to all participating teams this year and if any of you are sending squads to London this July, maybe I will see you there. I will probably be shirtless much of the time and caked in sunscreen. So, if you are wanting to find me, I will be the blinding white spot in the middle of that cornfield so wear sunglasses before approaching and shield your eyes.
