In just more than one week, 10 teams from around the world and thousands of fans will pour into Lower Eastern Sussex County to play in or watch the Senior League Softball World Series. They will stay for a week; one team will win; and most players and fans will get back on a plane, leaving for wherever they call home. Then the whole thing starts all over again.
Preparation for the World Series — which is being held this year at the Lower Sussex Little League complex for the third consecutive season — is a year-round effort involving not only a District III committee but at least 20 dedicated Lower Sussex volunteers.
“We work all year ’round,” said Bruce Layton, the president of Lower Sussex’s board. “I make sure everybody is doing their jobs.” But by this the third year, “everybody knows what to do.”
Although the true field preparation will not start until this weekend, Lower Sussex officials have been watering the fields, cleaning the dugouts, cutting the grass – keeping them in the best shape possible for the tournament which starts on Aug. 6, Layton said.
The teams — all of which are yet to be determined — should arrive by late Friday or early Saturday but won’t begin play until Sunday, Aug. 6. The tournament will then run until Saturday, Aug. 12, when a champion is named.
An estimated 1,200 to 1,500 people usually attend each night’s games and take a toll on one thing in particular: the concession stand. Anna Mae Long — a Lower Sussex board member in charge of concessions for the tournament — said the stocking process has already begun.
“We go in and do inventory; we have to restock,” Long said. “Get everything ready. And make sure everything is in place.”
Long said she has ordered 432 hot dogs, eight boxes of hamburgers, 10 boxes of chicken fingers, French fries, Gatorades, sodas, water and more. And even that won’t even last through the middle of the week, she said.
“It takes quite a bit,” Long said. “That won’t last us the whole time.”
John Pitman — another Lower Sussex board member and volunteer for more than 20 years — said that stocking the concession stand for the week-long event will cost the district about $4,000.
Pitman’s job this week is to take care of the bills for Lower Sussex, which “doesn’t make a cent” on the World Series.
“(We’re) getting things done,” he said, adding that the district does recover the concession money through sales. “We start this week really doing the work. We have to get the snack bar fixed up because it’s a big crowd. We get the fields in beautiful shape. There’s all kinds of little things to do.”
Scheduling for another round of volunteers is just another “little thing” in the long line of “little things” to be done this week. Umpires need to have schedules this week. Parking attendants do, too. At least eight people are in the press box at all times during the tournament games and that many or more are in the concession stand.
Scheduling the approximately 80 people it takes to run the tournament daily is just one more little thing that Layton and his group of volunteers — including dozens who were not mentioned in this story — will have to do. And they’ll have to do it in about a week before the thousands of players and fans converge on the area for the third annual paring of Sussex County and the Senior League World Series.
“It’s a lot of work,” Pitman said.
Check next week’s Coastal Point for continuing coverage on the volunteers that make the Senior League World Series possible.