[cksportsfan]

I live in Elizabethtown. Have my entire life.

The complex IS nice:
- Designed well.
- Great viewing for fans.
- Pretty easy to get to (not far from Central Hardin, straight down ring road from hotel area, straight down mulberry from hotel area).
- Wi-Fi abundant.
- Plenty of areas for teams to hang out/camp out/set up tents or whatever.
- Fields are gorgeous.
- Huge dugouts.
- Good scoreboards (although originally they were all supposed to be nine-inning scoreboards where you could program teams' names in to give it that extra touch)

That being said, there is at least one HUGE issue with the park.

If you've been to tiebreaker (Hoptown), Fisher (Owensboro) or even Skyview (J'town) -- the last three places that have held State, IIRC -- they ALL have that centralized building.

E'town does NOT (although did in original designs, got cut as park was running WAY over budget).

For the average state tournament game, you have the:
- P.A. announcer
- official bookkeeper
- KHSAA online computer statkeeper (for online live stats)
- KHSAA officials/umpire coordinator (for rating the officials during the game)
- 1 or 2 Ihigh guys (for online live audio/visual)
- At least one radio station (1 or 2 guys)
- Home newspaper
- Visitor newspaper
- Home Site newspaper (Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer for when it is in Owensboro, New Era when Hopkinsville hosts, Courier-Journal when J'town hosts)

And with four games going on at a time, you've got 40 people (10 per game) to account for. The Elizabethtown Sports Park has no permanent allotted space away from the elements.

The E.S.P. tried tents to help with this when it hosted a national-qualifier (winner got OHio Valley bid to Cal Ripken nationals on CSS TV) youth baseball tourney last summer.

Massive failure.

With the tent option, you had people walking in front or behind you. Wind blowing papers all over the place. Rain. And putting a statkeeper out in the sun all day when they are accustomed to being in the air condition high above the action (and away from distractions) did NOT sit well with the W.L. Stats people.

So while the park is very very nice and has a lot to offer -- it will get many youth tournaments and other events because of its other amenities -- do NOT look for it to land a major KHSAA/NAIA/NCAA tourney any time soon.

Because what the organizers NEED for media/statkeepers/themselves, the E.S.P. does NOT have.

Obviously travel ball is a different animal and doesn't need all that press box space.