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March 22, 2021 Re: softball article in Star News I would like to first say, “Thank you to Dave Anderson and his son Scott”. They worked countless of hours back in the day to promote softball to the area, keep the fields in shape, get improvements done to the fields and had them ready to play in good and bad weather. They were marked, dragged and if a rain storm came thru, water was pushed off so games could be played. From those golden years until now, there has been a decline in adult softball, I would agree to that. I have almost 40 years of being on a softball field whether it was playing the game or the years I umpired out on these fields. My daughter, who is now almost 30, stated to me years ago, the funniest times she had was going to the fields to watch me play, be with other kids and families, out on the softball fields. Couple of things I would like to point out from the article, some suggestions and other information to help inform the board and whoever else is involved with this issue. Let’s start here with some things that I don’t think has help keep teams or bring teams here to play softball. The city installed new score boards, they hardly get used. We are told they don’t work or something is wrong with them. Brand new irrigation system took all summer to install and made the fields rock hard. Water hardly got turned on and then several times during play, they turned on interrupting the games and had to be shut off. Concession stand has nothing, no water, no pop, no candy, nothing. How do you expect families to come out and watch if there is nothing to buy for the kids and ball players? A lot of ball players come right from work and would like a hot dog or something to eat. Put a microwave to use out there to cook things if needed. Sometimes fields were not dragged, bases still at the wrong distance for league play and no chalk lines. These are all little things that add up over time to keep players away. We had men, women and families would come from miles around to play because things ran well, things were nicer than there local area fields and competition of play was at its best. Lastly playing times, for the first time in all my years of playing ball, we had to wait 2 hours between games before we played our next game for the night. (6:30 then 9:30) Twice last year, one game at 9:30 game time, nobody likes that and that is a scheduling problem. So now the helpful suggestions, start with something to sell in the concession stand. Simple pop and candy. I’m sure there is a license or something that makes this tough to do but something is better than nothing. This is one of the things to hopefully help bring out families to the park. Game times, if you have only 12 teams per night, change game times to 7:00, 8:00 and 9:00. Keep all the teams there at the fields and use all the fields. The article says you haven’t done any promoting for the league. Well I think it is safe to assume the “golden years” are over and now some promotion is needed. Calling past teams, send out information to people in January to get involvement from teams. Promote on Facebook or other means to get teams involved to play. If you let them come to you then yes, you will not have leagues here anymore. I’m sure to build this to a 94 team level years ago, it took a lot of phone calls, letters, flyers and meetings to get this going. I would love to volunteer to help but working 3 jobs and having 2 other businesses it isn’t something I would be comfortable to do at this time. I would think it would be an incredibly sad day to see this adult league be cancelled or not available anymore. Here is my phone number and email if you want to talk to me or get in contact with me for further discussion, 612-281- 4145 and dsgslug@yahoo.com. Thanks for listening, Doug Green