The Alaska Pride Men's C team from Anchorage went down to Reno for the ASA Balloon Race Tournament the weekend of Sept. 8-9. There were teams from California, Oregon and the host Nevada. The Pride placed 7th out of 30 teams here's Matt Sugita's recollection of how the weekend unfolded for them :
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Gm 1) 18-10 Win
Gm 2) 32-14 loss from a Nevada team that put 16 runs up in the first inning before we even got to bat. They base hit us like crazy and we just didn't hit.
Gm 3) 16-13 win
Gm 4) 15-3 win
Gm 5) 18-14 win
Gm 6) 10-16 loss to a team from California

So, our experience down there has made at least me, appreciate our fields here in Anchorage. The fields down there are solid clay, with a bit of gravel on top of it so footing was horrible. We later found out that short and third would play in the grass so that they have lateral ability. Oh well. The fields were not soft because they were not allowed to use water for that purpose.

The first day the fields had deep spots in left and right, like 350 deep or more. So that changed the positioning of the fielders in those fields. If you hit one over their head you had an easy inside the park homerun! The second day they threw us a loop by putting the tournament on 285 foot fences. That really messed a few of the teams up. The second game we lost they must have had 8 outs from that. We had a couple I think.

The weather was good, 93 the first day 87 the next. I talked to a couple of teams and I gave them your website address to check out tournaments for them to come for. Several teams were interested. As for the competition, we could keep up with other teams, we just had a couple of issues like field stuff and a few hangovers and things.