Tournaments an economic home run

By Todd C. Elliott
todd.elliott@eunicetoday.com

Freshly charged from the recent study that rated Eunice as the 7th best place in Louisiana to raise a family, the Eunice Economic Development Committee discussed steps Thursday to further boost the city’s rating.
According to Don Reber – who is the head of the EEDC – the “bases are loaded and it’s time to hit a home run” for Eunice after hearing a presentation from Lance Pitre – who, as a member of the EEDC, invited special guests to the meeting: City Marshall Robert Johnson and Eunice City Recreation Department head George Schneider.
The group looked at “travel tournaments” as an economic stimulant for Eunice. While some baseball and softball tournaments are held at the Municipal Sports Complex, a push to bring more is under way.
“I think tournaments mean big business and mean good things for the city of Eunice,” said Pitre. “It’ll help our restaurants, it will help our hotels and help out the general economic scene. I know that we were always excited when we built the new ball park that there was the facility. And if you build it, they’ll come. We never really saw that in the last five years, or so, since we’ve had the ball park.”
Johnson told members to ignore his city marshal uniform as he informed them that he is also coaches a girls-10 and under- travel softball tournament team.
“Travel softball is getting big in Louisiana and travel baseball has been big and it’s getting bigger,” said Johnson. “I’m no economist...but I know how much money I spend when I go to Lake Charles, Westlake, Alexandria, Zachary and everywhere in between for these tournaments. This weekend we’re going to play in DeRidder. They have a couple of hotels there and they’re all booked with girls in softball uniforms playing ball all weekend.”
Johnson said that the tournaments normally bring in nearly 15 to 20 different teams. And sometimes, upwards of nearly 40 teams will convene in a city for the tournaments, according to Johnson.
“Not every industry has to have a smokestack coming out of it to bring money into the city,” said Johnson. “This place (the ball park) has no smokestack, has a dumpster for the trash, kids have a lot of fun and we bring money into the city.”
Bringing in more games, teams and players means one thing: more officials are needed to officiate the tournaments.
Umpires are in short supply in the Eunice area.
“With these travelling teams, the most difficult thing to have in a town like Eunice is that you have to have umpires to officiate the games,” said Pitre. “And Eunice does not have a strong bank of umpires in this area. And when we have to pull umpires from out of town, there’s that extra cost that cuts into doing the tournament in housing the umpires.”
Schneider said that it is not uncommon to import umpires from as far away as New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Monroe and Lake Charles.
More umpires means more expenses for the city for the food and lodging of the game officials.
The EEDC focused on the concept of bringing new restaurants and hotels to the area to better accommodate an influx of tournament parents and team players.
The EEDC also mulled over the idea of providing “coupons” to umpires that would directly draw funds from the Eunice Park and Recreation budget.