News

July 26, 2023

We recently completed our six consecutive weekend tournaments beginning on June 16th when we had men's class C, D & E for the Leroy Buchanan Memorial tournament. June 23 weekend we saw men's class D & E teams squaring off in the Ed White Memorial tournament. June 30th weekend was the Rex Marquardt Memorial tournament where we welcomed back the best of the best with a Major Class tournament. We had some national teams represented from Team USA and Team Australia as well as players from central America locations. We also were introduced to some up and coming young pitchers, age 17 and 18, from California and Minnesota, along with a development team of some of the best talent from Michigan during the Marquardt tournament. July 7th weekend was the Dick Harbaugh Memorial tournament for men's class C & D followed by the Dick Bare Invitational tournament with men's class D & E the weekend of July 14th. We wrapped up our summer by hosting the men's class B state finals July 21-23. This particular tournament set a new record of 62 homeruns in 13 games!  Go to our Facebook page, "D21 Softball at Petoskey" to see a game summary for every tournament along with pictures of champions, runner-up and individual award winners as well as some action photos.

The 2024 schedule of weekends will typically be posted in late January as we start gathering information about other tournaments and state finals in December and January. Occasionally we have teams so eager to get into our tournaments they will start sending in requests to participate by email in September and October which is great to see that level of interest! Our tournament entry fee is $600 for a four game round robin tournament. The schedule for 2024 will likely be very similar. We would like to offer a women's fastpitch tournament the first weekend (June 14-16, 2024) if there is enough interested teams. Otherwise, we will fill it with a men's tournament as we did this year.

We typically play 5 team round robin tournaments with a four game guarantee. This has worked out well for teams traveling into the area so they can plan their weekend stay in Petoskey. Our weekend schedule typically has two games Friday night starting at 7:00 pm, resume Saturday morning at 9 or 10 am and play all day with two or three round robin games on Sunday starting at 8 am followed by the one game championship starting about 11:30 / 12:00 noon. You can find brackets with schedules so you can follow your favorite teams on this website several weeks prior to the start of each tournament. You can also follow the games through our facebook page, D21 Softball at Petoskey, which also serves as our archives if you want to go back in time. On this FB page we post game scores and some highlights after each game. This year we started posting the picture of the completed scorebook so players could track their stats and follow the top performers. Every now and then players will set up their personal cameras on the backstop and live stream games. When that happens, we will post a link on our facebook page. Live streaming action from the waterfront is something we will keep working on developing in the future. Hope to see you all at the waterfront in Petoskey which is one of the premier parks in the world with Lake Michigan's Little Traverse Bay behind left field and center field fences providing some of the most incredible sunsets you will ever see!

Many thanks to our corporate sponsors for the summer softball series - without your support we would not be able to offer these tournaments. Corporate Sponsors for 2023 included: Priority Mortgage from Grand Rapids, DJS Systems from Homer, BASES from Charlevoix and the Petoskey Visitors and Convention Bureau through PetoskeyArea.com. We also had support from Corktown Pizza Company from Petoskey who sponsored our pizza for homeruns program in 2023 as well as Trophy Case who assisted us with our award packages.

Plan on coming to Petoskey for the week and enjoy some league games with local men's teams playing on Tuesday and Thursday nights and local women's teams playing on Monday and Wednesday nights from mid-June into late July. There are lots of wonderful things to do indoors and outdoors in the area. For lodging information and more while attending D21 Softball events, please visit www.PetoskeyArea.com 

Scott