Chris Niewierowski has seen things in travel baseball that left a lot to be desired.
“A lot of times you would show up and they wouldn’t have certified umpires, they wouldn’t drag the fields and things like that,” he said. “So what we did, we just felt like we could do things a little bit better.”
Niewierowski and Mike Spears got together to try to provide what they view as a better alternative. They came up with Tournament Nation USA which they run out of Charleston, and they are inviting teams from southern West Virginia to be involved.
“We definitely want teams in southern West Virginia, from Princeton all the way to Beckley, Greenbrier County, all to come up,” Niewierowski said.
Bryan Johnson leads the successful Capital City Bandits organization and also wants to see teams from this area enter the tournaments.
“It seems like we don’t get a lot of baseball to the east, like Beckley, Bluefield, those areas,” Johnson said. “North, south and west, there’s tons of travel teams.”
Tournaments are not limited to West Virginia teams, of course. Teams from Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia are also interested in the organization’s tournaments. That includes Ironbridge Academy from northern Virginia, which is bringing one of the nation’s top-ranked 9U teams to the Play Ball Tournament the weekend of June 25.
The organization will also crown state champions for each division July 23-25.
The tournaments are for teams in the 8U, 9U, 10U, 11U and 12U age divisions.
Niewierowski is excited about what he considers innovations that teams will find at each of Tournament Nation USA’s tournaments. The fields are dragged and lined between each game, players’ names are announced over the public address and umpire director Steve Hudson supplies certified umpires for each tournament.
He added that organization representatives will be present at every tournament.
To register for a Tournament Nation USA tournament, visit http://play.travelbaseballrankings.com.
For more information, call Niewierowski at 304-549-1533.
Email: [email protected]
