Summer baseball tournament with $20,000 winner-take-all prize coming to Wichita area
.jpg "The SummerBall Showdown will debut this summer with a winner-take-all prize of $20,000 for the tournament.")
A summer baseball tournament with grand aspirations and a $20,000 winner-take-all grand prize is coming to the Wichita area this summer.
It’s called SummerBall Showdown and the five-day, double-elimination tournament to be held at the Genesis Sports Complex in Goddard from Wednesday, July 28 to Sunday, Augusta 1 is geared toward summer collegiate league teams.
Sound familiar? That’s because it’s a similar concept to the long-running National Baseball Congress World Series in Wichita, but in a different venue and an earlier start date.
In a press conference announcing the debut of SummerBall Showdown on Thursday, tournament director Steve Schaad, the former Wichita Wranglers general manager, said he believes both tournaments — the NBC World Series generally starts the first week of August — can co-exist.
“SBS is a unique and distinct event from anything that has come to Wichita in the past,” Schaad said. “We do not think we will have a negative impact on any of the traditional baseball events in the community.”
It remains to be seen if SummerBall Showdown will attract the same teams as the NBC World Series and if those teams will decide to play in both or be forced — due to finances — to choose one or the other.
In 2019, the NBC World Series paid prize money to the top nine teams in its tournament with $20,000 also going to the winner. Both the NBC World Series and SummerBall Showdown have similar entry fees for teams, as SBS charges a $1,250 entry fee for teams that register before mid-April.
On Thursday, Schaad said he had sent out invitations to more than 450 teams across the country — mostly collegiate summer league teams, but also to potential high school all-star teams and semi-professional teams that might be attracted to the $20,000 grand prize. He also mentioned he sees the potential for a team of former professionals — much like the Kansas Stars teams that competed in the NBC World Series — to join the tournament field.
In its inaugural tournament, the SummerBall Showdown plans to have a minimum of 24 teams in the field this summer. The Genesis Sports Complex, with four collegiate-regulation fields, can comfortably host up to 48 teams. With access to the baseball fields at Goddard High School and Eisenhower High School, Schaad said the tournament has the potential to host as many as 96 teams.
Players will be eligible as long as they are at least 18 years old — or high school graduates in 2021 — and retired from professional baseball by May of this year. Teams can have up to 32-man rosters.
The prize money will be awarded to a chosen sponsor of the winning team to adhere to the NCAA’s amateurism regulations for college players to remain eligible. Equipment prizes will be given to second and third place teams.
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