Mount Prospect offers new recreational softball tournaments

Stop by the Mount Prospect Park District's Majewski Athletic Complex located at the Northwest Tollway and Elmhurst Road in Mount Prospect almost any summer weekend and you can find a 16-inch softball tournament underway.

And it is usually incredibly high level, tough competition at those tournaments.

But this summer they are trying something new.

"We have had complaints that the competition in all of our tournaments is too tough. So this year we are introducing two tournaments for recreational players," Bob Ancona, athletic department manager for the park district, explained.

The park district will host a men's 16-inch recreational softball tournament on the weekend of July 25-27 and a 14-inch coed recreational tournament on Aug. 1-3, he said. Class A teams are not allowed in these tournaments.

They are hoping to attract between 24 and 32 teams for each tournament which they plan to treat just like their near-pro "majors" tournaments with top umpires, concessions and a beer tent, Ancona said.

"We are hoping some of the younger teams will come out and have fun at a much more low-key, manageable level than we have with the majors," he continued.

Entry fee is $200 per team; registration is due Friday for the men's teams and July 18 for the coed teams. There will be team trophies and cash prizes awarded to the top four teams in the double elimination competition.

The championship games for the tournaments will be played at 6 p.m. July 27 and Aug. 3, respectively. No admission will be charged to spectators those weekends, Ancona said.

"Thirteen out of 15 weekends this summer we have tournaments scheduled there," he said. "The only weekends we take off are the holiday ones."

Most weekends the teams that are playing on the complex's three fields are the near-pro "majors" who play at an extremely high level of competition. In fact, the park district has hosted the American Softball Association's National tournament at Majewski nine times since 1984 with the most recent tournament held in 2006, Ancona said.

They have also hosted softball tournaments for the majors every year for the past 20 years and the last weekend in June had 42 teams playing in the 7th annual Chicago Championships, an open tournament.

Teams interested in registering for either the men's recreational tournament or the coed tournament may contact Ancona at (847) 640-1000.