There will be a large influx of people in town as the Manitowoc Junior Ships host a Baseball Tournament at the Manitowoc Youth Sports Complex this weekend. Randy Heinzen is President & Treasurer of the Manitowoc Youth Baseball Association. Heinzen says, “There will be 52 teams converging on Manitowoc from all over the state of Wisconsin. Local teams, to teams as far away as Marinette, Waukesha, Sun Prairie, Racine, teams coming from all over the state. Hopefully filling up our hotels, our restaurants, spending some money and then playing some great baseball.”
Teams with players between the ages of 8-and-13 will be using all four new diamonds, along with Fields 2-and-3 at Citizen Park for the older kids. Heinzen says this is the 3rd year for the complex to help facilitate growth in youth baseball. “We’ve grown from 400 kids in our program 2 years ago, to over 630 kids in our program this year. We’re serving our local families with providing leagues Monday through Thursday.”
Their second focus or priority is to host tournaments. Heinzen says, “It’s really interesting when we bring people in from all over the state. These teams travel in tournaments, they’re somewhere every weekend and time and time again we hear that this is the nicest facility in the state. It makes us feel good knowing all the hard work that was done.”
The baseball games start this afternoon at 4:30 & there’s no admission fee with concessions sold all weekend. Spectators can also utilize the miniature golf and the Family Aquatic Center at Citizen Park during the tournament which is expected to run through Sunday evening.
Heinzen said another big youth tournament is coming to the city August 1st through the 4th when 85 Girls Softball teams compete in the War-on-the-Shore Tournament.