Bloomington Selected to Host Girls’ ASA National Softball Tournament

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Nov. 15, 2013

For more information, please contact:

Mick Renneisen, Director, City of Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department, 327.6121 or renneism@bloomington.in.gov

Mike McAfee, Executive Director, Visit Bloomington, 355.7720 or mike@visitbloomington.com

Bloomington Selected to Host Girls' ASA National Softball Tournament

Bloomington, Ind. - Ongoing investments in City parks and facilities, including the recent $994,000 appropriation for improvement projects in parks throughout the city, continue to pay off as high-quality sports fields bring national sports tournaments and thousands of visitors to Bloomington. Recently, Bloomington has been selected to host the Amateur Softball Association (ASA) Girls' 16-Under Class B Northern National Tournament, to be held in July 2015.

During its annual Council Meeting in Oklahoma City, Okla., the ASA of America announced the host sites for the 2015 national championship season. More than 40 teams from across the ASA's Northern Territory, which includes the western states of Kansas, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota, as well as Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa.

The Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department partners each year with Visit Bloomington to attend the ASA council meeting, where tournament venues are evaluated and selected. Hundreds of host city hopefuls from across the U.S. attend the ASA meeting to show off their communities' venues, accessibility and tournament-hosting skills in hopes of acquiring enough votes from the ASA to "win" a tournament.

"It's an honor being chosen by the ASA as the destination for their national tournament," said Mayor Mark Kruzan. "Events like this are what make our continued investments in the community so worthwhile."

"We are grateful to be awarded this event as competition to win these lucrative ASA tournaments continues to grow," said Mike McAfee, Executive Director of Visit Bloomington. "Communities across the country are making significant investments in their facilities and aggressively going after events. The recent announcement from the city to invest nearly $1 million in our park facilities, including our softball fields, helps us continue to compete for and host quality tournaments."

According to Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department director Mick Renneisen, Bloomington has an outstanding, national reputation as a welcoming, first-class provider of sports tournaments and that reputation has helped the city win the privilege of hosting national softball events, year after year.

"The process the ASA uses to award its national tournaments is designed to ensure that each tournament, no matter where it is held, is run to the ASA's highest standards," said Mick Renneisen, Director of the Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department. "We are proud of our hard-earned reputation as one of the top tournament sites in the nation and are extremely pleased to bring another ASA national championship to Bloomington."

During the summer of 2014, Bloomington will host the ASA/USA Girls' Class A 12-Under National Championships from July 28 through Aug. 3 at Twin Lakes Sports Park, Winslow Sports Complex and Lower Cascades ballfields. More than 100 teams are expected to participate and the estimated local economic impact from this week-long tournament is about $1 million. The 2014 tournament was awarded to Bloomington during the ASA's annual meeting in November 2012.

The ASA also presented Bloomington with a Jim Farrell Award of Excellence for hosting two of the highest-rated ASA national tournaments in the country in 2013: the ASA Girls' Class A and Class B 12-Under Northern and ASA Girls' Class A 18-Under Northern National Championships.

For more information, please contact the Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department at 349.3700.

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