Thursday, July 02, 2009
10th Annual Wifflefest Underway at Ashland Southview
This is an excerpt from an article in today's Ashland (OH) newspaper. To read the entire article, click here.
Play (whiffle) Ball! July Fourth tradition celebrates 10th year
Arms crossed and memories spinning like a hubcap on a highway, Mark Abel and Zac Hess stood 5 feet apart inside an office at Southview Grace Brethren Church on Tuesday.
Recollecting five years ago, when the two were part of a mission trip that took whiffleballs, bats and Bibles to the Dominican Republic, it sure sounded like a sight to behold.
Hess said people poured out of the community and toward the goat pasture where the group had sprung up a game of whiffleball with opposition from the country. Some of them, according to Hess, actually had been looked at by Major League Baseball scouts.
"They were ballplayers, that's for sure," Hess said.
But this was whiffleball, a game which has grown as identifiable with Southview in the past 10 years as peanut butter with jelly.
The missionaries won by a run.
"We're trying to pitch, we're holding babies, trying to speak Spanish," Abel explained nearly as frantically as the actions sounded. "... It was intense and they wanted to win so bad."
Hess said they left the bats and balls there -- but they didn't need to bring them back. The sport and the July 4 tradition now clings to the property at Southview every summer like a barnacle on a boat.
Beginning today, roughly 100 teams with a minimum of four players each are expected to play in Wifflefest 10, a nine-field event which has gone from a playful one-day shindig to a prominent four-day Ashland staple. As of Wednesday night, 85 teams were registered in the five total divisions (elementary, junior high, high school, adult and family).
Play (whiffle) Ball! July Fourth tradition celebrates 10th year
Arms crossed and memories spinning like a hubcap on a highway, Mark Abel and Zac Hess stood 5 feet apart inside an office at Southview Grace Brethren Church on Tuesday.
Recollecting five years ago, when the two were part of a mission trip that took whiffleballs, bats and Bibles to the Dominican Republic, it sure sounded like a sight to behold.
Hess said people poured out of the community and toward the goat pasture where the group had sprung up a game of whiffleball with opposition from the country. Some of them, according to Hess, actually had been looked at by Major League Baseball scouts.
"They were ballplayers, that's for sure," Hess said.
But this was whiffleball, a game which has grown as identifiable with Southview in the past 10 years as peanut butter with jelly.
The missionaries won by a run.
"We're trying to pitch, we're holding babies, trying to speak Spanish," Abel explained nearly as frantically as the actions sounded. "... It was intense and they wanted to win so bad."
Hess said they left the bats and balls there -- but they didn't need to bring them back. The sport and the July 4 tradition now clings to the property at Southview every summer like a barnacle on a boat.
Beginning today, roughly 100 teams with a minimum of four players each are expected to play in Wifflefest 10, a nine-field event which has gone from a playful one-day shindig to a prominent four-day Ashland staple. As of Wednesday night, 85 teams were registered in the five total divisions (elementary, junior high, high school, adult and family).
