Last year’s tournament was very difficult for me emotionally. I seriously considered hanging up the bat and balls to stay home. It seemed as though the competitive spirit of the game was out of control; disrespectful language, tempers ranging from annoyed to enraged, and the one that hit me the hardest was when a coach went out of his way to make sure a 13-year old girl did not play as a pick-up player for the entire tournament because he was still angry she quit his team earlier in the summer. This is not an environment I wanted to be in. Time to ask myself why Wacky even hosts a tournament.
As the months passed, I ran into several young softball players that expressed to me how much they loved the Wacky Tournament; it was their favorite. I also ran into the UIC from last year’s tournament, who I thought had taken a metaphorical beating from the tournament last year. He also expressed that it is many of the umpire’s favorite tournament. “You’re having it again this year, of course!” were the words I heard over and over. “Not a chance,” was my thought. After having long conversations with my husband, we determined we didn’t want the few bad experiences to smother out our good experiences. So, why are we doing this?
Nick wanted Wacky to raise money and awareness for childhood cancer research and for young adult cancer survivors to attend outdoor adventure camps. Time to bring in the cancer kids to remind all of us that softball is secondary. Keeping these kids alive and living is paramount. So, I got to work. My daughter and a couple of her friends helped me make 23 posters of our local cancer cuties. We researched their bios, many were heartbreaking and many were inspiring. There were a few tears as we poured our love into those posters. Some cuties were survivors, some in treatment and we had 5 angels represented, too.
We assigned each team a Cancer Cutie to play for during the tournament. We had a wonderful photography studio (Picture This!) that donated an 8×10 photo of each Cutie and then printed out the entire poster, which I had laminated. They also took pictures during the tournament – the link will take you there. The teams loved the idea and many made a wonderful effort to show their Cutie how important they are to their team. We taped up the original posters in the complexes and handed out a laminated copy to each team.
