For seven years, the diamond behind Officers Row was a place where girls of the West came to chase big dreams.
For seven summers, Fort Vancouver Little League was the last stop along the trail to the Little league Softball World Series. For seven August weeks, Dave Wallis’ dream turned Vancouver into a big stage for teams from Alaska to Arizona.
That run ended this summer, when Fort Vancouver Little League hosted the Little League Softball Western Regional for the final time.
Little League officials recently announced that the Little League Softball tournament will follow an identical format as Little League Baseball. Starting next summer, the Little League Softball Western Regional will be held in San Bernardino, Calif., headquarters of the Little League Western Region.
“It was a great run,” said Wallis, the longtime president of Fort Vancouver Little League. “Little League is doing the right thing” by treating the girls who play softball to the same experience the baseball teams have.
In 1998, Fort Vancouver Little League hosted the softball regional for the first time. Back then, it included only four teams that had won multi-state divisional tournaments.
That experience convinced Wallis that Fort Vancouver Little League should try for a more permanent role as a regional host. With the Little League Softball World Series at Alpenrose Dairy in Portland, Vancouver had the advantage of proximity.
It took about six years, but Wallis and local Little League district administrator Mike Ray won the opportunity to host the regional for the first time in 2004.
Ray found hosting a week-long regional both taxing and rewarding.
“When you’re hosting it, at times you kind of wish you weren’t doing it,” Ray said. “But then when it’s over, you think ‘Gosh that wasn’t so bad,’ and you kind of miss it.”
So, yes, the regional will be missed by those — volunteers all — who poured themselves into the event for the past seven years.
“I had a lot of fun,” Wallis said. “I saw what Little League can really be. I saw the best side of kids and of adults. It’s just too bad that more people couldn’t be there to see what Little League is all about.”
Actually, the tournament attracted a nice crowd, especially on championship Sunday in recent years. And, this summer, the Burbank team that won the this regional played for the World Series title.
Fort Vancouver Little League will no longer be on that path. But in 2011 it will play host to a different spectacle.
The Washington state championship tournament for Little League’s flagship division — 12-year-old baseball — will be played at FVLL. The winner there will go play in the Northwest Regional at San Bernardino for a shot at the Little League World Series.
It will be a big deal.
Beyond that, Ray said it’s possible that Little League will look to Vancouver as a possible site for other significant tournaments.
“We can offer the kids a good product,” Ray said. “We have good volunteers and we do a good job with (tournaments).”
Wallis, the Fort Vancouver Little League president whose ties to Little League in Clark County go back almost a half century, wonders what the vibe will be like when the Little League Baseball state tournament returns to his fields next summer. With the television exposure for Little League baseball starting at the regional tournaments, he suspects the competitive intensity will be palpable, that the atmosphere might not be quite as easy-going as it usually was at the softball regionals.
But he’s looking forward to it, filled with pride, appreciation and confidence that the team of volunteers who for seven years did their best to make the softball regionals memorable for the participants will do the same for Little League’s boys of summer.
Paul Danzer covers community sports for The Columbian. Reach him at 360-735-4521 of paul.danzer@columbian.com.
