Partnerships produce a great annual event |
 We’re back again for our 16th annual Kokanee Glacier Challenge Softball Tournament.The event continues to get more and more popular every year with this year's tournament filling up in late June. We hate having to turn away teams but we only have 14 fields that we can use and each field can only handle 10 teams with our four-game guarantee. I would imagine that next year will see teams sign up even earlier. In 2002, one of the teams that didn’t get in drove up during the tournament to pay cash for 2003 to make sure they got in! The same thing will be happening this year as we have one team coming for the weekend even though they didn’t get in.
We have a committee of 18 people and all of them contribute in a variety of ways. Two that I would like to single out are Peter Miller, who is serving his 16th year in charge of First Aid, and Roberta Bobicki, who keeps taking on more responsibility and is currently our treasurer-secretary, in charge of wrist bands, concessions, beer garden security, etc. Rotary has been our key partner from day one and year after year do an excellent job with beer garden organization. The Columbia Brewery is very supportive of the event and I appreciate being able to work with a rep of the caliber of Dan Allen. We appreciate the teams that support our tournament and want you to know that any profits made are put back into our community. We have been putting aside a bit of money each year and were the first community group to come forward in support of our new indoor pool with a $50,000 donation. This pool will be attached to the community centre at the top of the hill and will be open when you come to the 2005 tournament. Other smaller donations are given annually to support youth and high school sports, special events, dry grad, etc. One interesting note as to how the tournament is evolving is how it becomes more recreationally focused each year. Our first few years, we had a competitive division and a recreational division. We then broke the recreational division down into advanced, intermediate and beginner. Over the years, teams stopped signing up for competitive and advanced and we now offer intermediate and beginner. This tells us that people want to come here to play ball but, more importantly, they want to enjoy the atmosphere with the music, beer gardens, beach volleyball, concessions, fireworks (thanks to the Fire Department), camping and other features designed to create a good time. On a personal note, this is my 16th year with the Kokanee Tournament and it’s always a pleasure to welcome teams back to our community each year. Get into the Kokanee spirit , relax and enjoy yourselves. |
I would like to specifically thank a few people for making the tournament such a big success. Mark McKee was our chairman for our first 15 years and was elected Mayor of Revelstoke at the last civic election. He has stepped down as chairman but continues to be very involved with organizing bands and prizes. Mark’s vision, organizing ability, personality, and sense of humour were what built this tournament. Mark’s wife, Pat, has also been very involved for years as a committee member and is an important part of our team.