Welcome State Tournament players and families

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By Regina Smith
Managing Editor

Today families and players from all over the state will converge on Poteau to begin the OK Kids Midget Baseball State Tournament play.
Poteau will be the host site for the tournament that will begin today at 2 p.m. with eight teams that made it through regionals. There will be four games tonight, four games Wednesday night, three games on Thursday, two on Friday and possibly two on Saturday for the finals depending upon how it all plays out.
So to the fans, players and families of the Durant Rangers, Elk City Brown Sox, Kingfisher Jackets, Shawnee Muckdogs, Holdenville Outlaws, Weatherford Red, Tushka and of course the Poteau Pirates, we say welcome and good luck.
"We are excited to begin the state tournament today, especially with Poteau being the host site," said Jerry Pitchford President of the Green Country OK Kids Association which is the region that includes LeFlore County. "We want to thank all those people who worked so hard to make it possible for us to have the tournament here. Including Dr. Steve Smith, Coach Sockey and Coach Perdue who have helped us so much in preparing the fields and the Poteau Dugout Club. I just want to congratulate all the teams and players who have made it this far. I want to also encourage everyone to play hard and practice good sportsmanship this week."
Aside from the games there will also be a skills competition at 11 a.m. at the PARC for tournament participants.
In honor of the tournament PDN is planning special coverage of the tournament in the form of a mini-sports edition that will be inside our regular paper beginning on Wednesday morning. Between Wednesday and Saturday the mini-editions will contain coverage of the action from the action of the day before. We will wrap up the coverage with a special tournament section that will publish on Wednesday July 20. That section will contain the coverage of the championship games on Saturday as well as pictures from action all week long. For those of you visiting our area from out of town you can pre-order the final special section and PDN will mail it to you.
Play Ball!