By: Ava-Caroline Schmidt
Southern Adventist University’s annual all-night softball tournament returned to the Summit
Softball Complex, bringing students, parents and local community members together for a night
of competition that lasted into the early morning.
This year, Troy Walker, director for Southern’s Intramurals, added a new all-star game aspect for
the guys and girls before the actual tournament. Walker reached out to the softball team captains
and asked them to recommend their four best players. The selections were divided into East and
West teams for both the men’s and women’s divisions.
These all-star games began at 8:15pm, with the East women’s team and the West men’s team
winning the matches. At 9pm, the regular games started, and the countdown of the tournament
outcomes had begun.
Throughout the softball season, there were two divisions in one main league for the girls, while
the guys had four divisions across an A & B league. Therefore, during the tournament, all the
leagues are combined into two main groups: guys and girls.
For the tournament, the women’s league was double elimination all the way up to the
championship match, where the winner of the winner’s bracket goes against the “winner” of the
loser’s bracket for the title. As for the men’s tournament, because of the number of teams, they
were single elimination until there were eight remaining teams. Those eight last standing teams
then played double elimination for the rest of the tournament. Their final was the same as the
girls, a single championship game.
The all-night softball tournament is a place where students, parents and locals can come to play,
watch and have a fun experience. Brenda Garcia, an enrollment management employee for
Southern and a mom to two of the athletes competing in the tournament, commented that
“Seeing a community getting together and enjoying a good time, in a healthy way,” was great to
witness.
It’s not only about being a part of the health message but also being a part of a community by
playing sports that is very special.
And it was not just players on different teams. Refs and scorekeepers swapped roles, going from
writing down the score to trying to score a run for their team.
“Honestly, it’s kinda fun…it is definitely kind of stressful sometimes, especially this softball
tournament moreso than normal. Score keeping is a little bit more intense.” said Marli Mitchell, a
junior history major, who has been scorekeeping for intramurals since her freshman year.
Mitchell added that one of the reasons for the intensity and fast-paced routine of the night was
that during the regular softball season, games are 55 minutes, whereas for the tournament they
are 30 to 35 minutes.
The final games concluded early the following morning. Team Base-ically Tired beat the Bat
Biddies team in the women’s championship game with an 11-0 win at 6:35am, while Team
Griggs won the guys division, beating the G-REG team 11-5 at 6:45am. Both winning teams had
come up from the loser’s bracket – which is also called the secondary bracket. In a double-elimination tournament, that is where teams go after their first loss – to win the final for their divisions, proving that resilience, determination, prayer, trust, caffeine and never giving up can
change the outcome.
Rebecca O’Dell, a senior business administration major, said that the final was tons of fun.
“I played with a lot of people that I’m friends with and that I play other intramurals with, so it
made the games full of good energy and not a lot of pressure,” O’Dell said.
O’Dell went on to say that she was excited for the win since this is her last year, along with a lot
of her other teammates. One of her teammates’ parents flew all the way from California to watch
and support.
“I was so excited and happy that her family got to witness her win.” O’Dell said, highlighting
that the all-night softball gives players, families, officials and scorekeepers an opportunity to
compete while spending the night together as a community.
