More than 40 youth baseball teams participate in Missouri tournament during pandemic

Forty-seven youth baseball teams gathered for a tournament in Missouri over Mother’s Day weekend, USA Today reported.

Roughly 550 kids between the ages of 7 and 14 participated in the Mother’s Day Classic, which was split between two venues west of St. Louis, according to the outlet.

Dan Peterson, a coach for his son’s team, was hesitant to let his 11-year-old play, but ultimately agreed to let him participate after learning the tournament’s organizers planned to implement safety measures, The New York Times reported.

“Everybody feels a little bit differently about the situation,” Peterson told the newspaper. “We decided collectively as a team to go ahead and participate.”

GameTime Tournaments, the event’s organizer, implemented a lengthy list of social distancing guidelines, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

For instance, players and coaches would be required to stand at least six feet apart, only three kids would be allowed in the dugout at a time and stealing bases would not be permitted, according to the newspaper. High fives were also banned.

Tournament director Rob Worstenholm told USA Today that the players “did an outstanding job” adhering to the measures.

“If they wouldn’t have, we could’ve looked really bad,” he said, according to the outlet. “But it turned out to be just the opposite. It turned out fantastic. Everybody followed the rules. And it was a beautiful thing.”

However, the Post-Dispatch reported that during the tournament, more than three boys were seen huddled in the dugout and that players stole bases, tagged each other out and leaned in to discuss the game with coaches and other players.

“I think we did our best, for having 12-year-old boys who don’t always listen,” mother Kathy Tierney, 37, told the newspaper.

Public health officials said the even was troubling, the Times reported.

Missouri had 9,918 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 488 deaths as of May 11, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. The St. Louis and Kansas City areas have relatively high concentrations compared to the rest of the state.

“There is so much that we don’t know about transmission in our state,” Lynelle Phillips, the vice president of the Missouri Public Health Association, told the newspaper. “To hold a huge baseball tournament, even the most optimistic of us have to cringe at that.”

She added that the tournament could burden local health officials if someone from the tournament tests positive for the virus, the Times reported. Contact tracers would have to identify everyone the infected person came in contact with, which would prove more difficult if the person had traveled out of their county or state, according to the newspaper.

“It comes down to the poor contact tracer,” Phillips told the Times. “It’s just an added complication.”

Epidemiologist Zachary Binney posted about the tournament on Twitter, writing that “large tournaments, travel ball should be last to come back. Start with small practices, then single games (between) local teams.”

But Worstenholm says another tournament is on the horizon.

On Monday, he told USA Today he’s working to finalize plans for a youth baseball tournament slated for next weekend.

He told the outlet he hopes the Mother’s Day Classic was “(proof) to everybody here in St. Louis that this can be done safely,” USA Today reported.

This story was originally published May 12, 2020 at 9:18 AM with the headline "More than 40 youth baseball teams participate in Missouri tournament during pandemic."