How This Whole Tournament Planning Mess Went Down
So gotta get ready for next year’s IMG Baseball tournament right? Can’t just wing it. First thing I did was dig through like a thousand emails trying to find last year’s schedule. Found some ancient PDF buried in my downloads folder – dates were totally wrong for 2025. Big surprise.
Checked the official sites, but it was all confusing. One page said tryouts open in August, another whispered October. Some “Coming Soon” banner just laughing at me. What a joke. Pulled up my calendar app feeling kinda hopeless.
Tried calling the parks department next. Phone rang forever. Finally got some dude named Gary who sounded half asleep. “Ain’t got no field assignments for next summer yet,” he mumbled. Great. Just great.
So I started throwing dates at the wall myself. Looked like this mess:
- Early Bird Registration: Gotta hammer this out fast, maybe late November before everyone forgets baseball exists.
- Tryouts Drama: Need at least three weekends. Mid-January to early Feb? Good luck avoiding football playoffs.
- Team Announced: Late Feb, so kids ain’t stressing before midterms (mostly the parents stressing though).
- Regular Season Kickoff: Gotta be first week of March or we run into hurricane season. Florida ain’t playing.
- Playoffs & Finals Chaos: Squeeze that disaster into May before everyone bails for summer break.
Cross-referenced this madness with the school district calendar. Three teacher workdays smack in the middle of my playoff dates. Are you kidding me? Moved stuff around like five times.
Printed the ugly draft schedule. Paper felt safer. Stared at it for a solid hour over cold coffee. Kept asking myself: Did I miss a big holiday weekend? Does Easter vacation wreck week three? Why does planning feel like defusing a bomb?
Sent it to the other coaches anyway. Waited. Pinged them after two days of radio silence. Responses trickled in – Mike hated the tryout dates, Sarah’s kid had band camp in late May, Dave just sent back “k.” Classic Dave.
Went back to the drawing board. Cut registration shorter, slid tryouts up a week, sacrificed playoffs to the vacation gods. Sent version 2.0. More radio silence. Finally got a thumbs-up emoji from Sarah and a “fine” from Mike. Dave remained Dave.
Marked those dates in my physical planner with a bright red pen. Felt real now. Still feels like walking on thin ice though. Gary better call me back soon about those fields or I’m gonna lose it. Final schedule still ain’t perfect, but I learned one thing: trying to herd baseball parents and coaches? Mission impossible. Just gotta plant the flag somewhere and pray.