User talk:Tdirsa

December 2012
Welcome to Wikipedia. We welcome and appreciate your contributions, including your edits to Mannville, Alberta, but we cannot accept original research. Please be prepared to cite a reliable source for all of your contributions. I have pasted your contributions below so that your effort is not lost. Hwy43 (talk) 03:33, 24 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Mannville’s Mammoth Softball Tournament


 * In the 1970’s the small community of Mannville, Alberta, with a population of 600 plus residents, hosted the largest and best know softball tournament in Western Canada.


 * During the winter of 1971 Lorne Scoggins and Tom Dirsa got together after a senior men’s hockey game for a few beers. Lorne ran the local café and Tom was a teacher at the town’s school. During the winter Lorne was the goalie for the men’s hockey team and Tom was the basketball coach for the high school. In the summer they came together to play on the men’s softball team, the Mannville Playboys, and this night it is where their conversation led them.


 * This discussion would eventually lead to the birth of a major sporting event, being reported in a major national news journal, and copied by others. It is a story of how individuals can come together for a common cause and accomplish the amazing.


 * In 1970 the senior men’s hockey team, the Golden Hawks, had hosted a softball tournament, but Lorne wanted to expand it to a forty team, five-division tournament, including two women’s divisions. He realized he couldn’t do it by himself. Since Tom had organized a number of successful basketball tournaments Lorne asked if he could help organize the on the field activities which included the draw, scorekeepers, umpires, and getting teams. Meanwhile Lorne would organize the off field activities, getting booth workers and a Saturday night Bar-Be-Que and dance.


 * Things progressed as spring approached. Tom had forty teams committed, with the help of Gerry Stevenson, had enough student volunteers for scorekeeping duties, had established the draw and the umpires were all lined up. Meanwhile Lorne had contacted many of the community’s businesses and families to volunteer for all of the off-field needs of the tournament.


 * In the beginning a key part of the tournament’s budget was based on the income from the entry fees paid by the teams. It would prove to be a disaster if the tournament had to refund the entry fees, but of course that would occur only if the tournament was a wash out. When the tournament became a success all of the entry fees would be returned to the teams through the prize money.


 * Because the tournament started at eight o’clock in the morning on Saturday, many of the teams arrived on Friday night. Eight the next morning the tournament started right on time and the teams scheduled to play later in the day began to arrive. Shortly, before the start of the second round of games were to begin, the sky opened up and the rain was so heavy you would have thought you were standing in a shower!


 * After months of planning disaster had struck. Since the Bar-Be-Que was already planned and the meat was cooked it went ahead along with the dance and live entertainment. By midnight it was obvious that Sunday would also be a wash out, but the first surprise of the weekend occurred when many of the teams signed up for next year’s tournament, even though they had not played a single inning of softball!


 * Most of the people that had helped in the event knew that the tournament had cost thousands of dollars to plan and yet the debt of the tournament was quite small in comparison to the money spent.


 * Scoggins and Dirsa were not sure how the debt would be repaid and were not sure they wanted to make a second attempt. They knew that if they could come close to a break even financially in a complete washout then a successful tournament could be a major fundraiser for the community. But, who would take a second chance with them?


 * Just before Christmas of 1971 they had their answer when RCMP Corporal Laurie Bracewell approached them and asked them if they would mind joining a committee to organize the 1972 tournament and as they say, the rest became history!


 * Cpl. Bracewell went about asking for volunteers and the winter of 1971 saw a meeting of all of those interested in seeing the tournament become a success. Since, at the time, it was the largest tournament ever attempted the committee formed the Mannville Mammoth Softball Association. Frank Renspies became its first chairman, Roy Kary, vice chairman, Corporal Bracewell, it’s secretary, Mary Broach the treasurer, Connie Ewing headed the important food committee, Mike Symborski headed the works committee and Tom Dirsa continued in his role as planning chairman. Lorne Scoggins decided to remain in the background, but could always be counted to assist in any way he could to help the tournament’s success.


 * The 1972 tournament was a huge success and the tournament rapidly became the tournament to attend if you played softball. Teams came from all over western Canada and the Yukon. Molson’s became a major sponsor and CFCW provided their best sports reporter to cover the event. Additional events were added to the weekend, including a Fly-in Breakfast held on Main Street each new activity was added to enhance the reputation of the tournament.


 * The event itself saw many of the players that would go on to represent Canada at the national and international levels and some very special team and individual efforts. There was the time when not one but two perfect games were pitched within 15 minutes of each other. Then there was the time that two teams from Saskatoon played 14 scoreless innings in the final of the Mannville Event and the game had to be called by darkness.


 * A few years later the rains would return for another go at cancelling the event when a Committee member was quoted he had seen whitecaps on one of the diamonds Friday evening. The storm moved out late Friday night and the ground crew began its work drying out the field. After a very busy night the tournament began on time with one game using a backup diamond for the eight o’clock game before resuming on the assigned diamond for the rest of the tournament.


 * The Toronto Star Weekly ran an article about the tournament in their July 7, 1973 issue, amazed that teams came from so far away to play in a tournament hosted by such a small rural community.


 * The first tournament awarded $2,500.00 to the top teams and by 1977 $12,500.00 was up for grabs.


 * By 1977 other communities were interested in copying the Mannville format and that spring a committee from Chauvin met with the Planning Chairman where they were provided with a number of insights. Chauvin would take those insights along with other ideas and begin a tournament in even a smaller community than Mannville. As the Mammoth Tournament began to fade Chauvin’s tournament was able to continue the tradition of small communities hosting tremendous tournaments.


 * As time went on the original committee members began to leave. Some were planned, as the committee knew that new “blood” was needed to keep the vitality of the committee and the event. However, some departures came quicker than expected. The first was when Cpl. Bracewell was transferred and then in 1977 Tom Dirsa left at the end of that school year. 1977 would be the last time he was involved with the tournament and finally the glue of the committee left in 1981 when Mary Broach returned to Georgia.


 * By the mid 1980’s the tournament had morphed into a slo-pitch tournament and by the end of 1990’s the tournament was more memory than anything else. Today when one drives through Mannville you can still see the five diamonds and they look like they are ready to host forty teams for a weekend of ball!


 * Over the years a number of memories still stand out from the time that Mannville hosted the greatest softball tournament in Western Canada. Like the time Frank Renspies was able to arrange with the Minburn Hutterite Colony to build a new food booth and some of the food for the evening bar-be-que. That co-operation would change a lot of the community’s perception on the colony.


 * Some of the humorous stories include the time when one of the play-by-play announcers made an embarrassing pause when he announced that the batter had “two strikes and no balls on the batter”. The game needed about five minutes before the laughter would stop and the game could resume!


 * Then there was a time two pitchers got into a pitching duel. One was 6’ 5” and the other was about 5’5” tall. Both could throw the ball at a very high velocity, however the shorter pitcher would literally throw himself at home plate and when he landed would dig a hole. After about three innings the hole was quite big and the ground crew began filling the hole between innings. After a few more innings the tall pitcher asked why the crew was so concerned, they told him they wanted to make sure it would not cause him any problems, he smiled and it was then the crew realized that his stride cleared the hole by two feet! Not a problem for him and the crew waited for the game to end before returning to their mound grooming duties.


 * Some of the best Western Canadian teams ever to play softball in the 1970’s attended Mannville’s tournament. From Saskatchewan came the Merchants, Rempel Brothers, and K & K Olsen. From Alberta came the Edmonton Playboys, the Camrose Merchants, and Lethbridge’s Miners. Among the women Camrose’s Max Macleans, Calgary’s Metro Ford & Majestics, and the Red Deer Angles were among the top teams to travel to Mannville.


 * We remember people coming to us and saying they were just driving through the community on their summer vacation and stopped to see what was going on, they stayed for both days of the tournament. Then there was the Sunday evening after the tournament was done and people were gassing up to head home at the same time the gas tankers were filing the stations. Many of the town’s merchants reported that their businesses income was greater on that weekend than the rest of the summer!


 * There was the day when the food committee approached us declaring a disaster as they were out of hamburgers. They were amazed when we just smiled at them. What they didn’t realize was that we knew this was a major indication that the tournament was a success! An arrangement was quickly made to supply addition hamburgers from a nearby town and in the meantime hot dogs became very popular.


 * During the weekend the total number of players and umpires outnumbered the citizens of Mannville and just like the players each citizen had a job to do to make the event a success.


 * The proceeds of the tournament went back into the community; it supported the school’s athletic program, community hockey, and assisted in the funding of a new recreational complex for Mannville.


 * Today the highway now bypasses Mannville, and many of the original committee members have either passed on or have moved away. The recreation complex is now over thirty-five years old and today many of Mannville’s citizens were children when Mannville was the center of the softball world in Western Canada that first full weekend in July.

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 * The following is the log entry regarding this warning: Mannville, Alberta was changed by Tdirsa (u) (t) ANN scored at 0.914961 on 2012-12-24T21:06:12+00:00 . Thank you. ClueBot NG (talk) 21:06, 24 December 2012 (UTC)