Softball Valley swinging into a busy season

By Justin Seward - Lethbridge Herald on May 11, 2022.

After facing COVID-19 challenges, Softball Valley is welcoming back 95 teams for a full slate games in 2022.
“We’ve had a great response from the teams,” said Hank Stoffer, Softball Valley facility manager.
“Right now we have 95 teams in three different leagues that are coming to play and the people are really excited to be back here. A lot of them haven’t seen each other for two or three years for the most part because we were pretty much shutdown and it’s a very large close-knit community of softball players. So to get back and see your teammates, the other teams and your friends and just be back out enjoying the game — like they love sport, they’re dedicated to it — it’s been good for them to come back.”
He said, “It looks good,” when it comes to the season outlook.
Tournaments are booked and games run every day of the week on all 11 diamonds and beach volleyball courts are to open in a couple of weeks.
“We run until the middle of August for the main leagues and fall league through to October,” said Stoffer.
“So it’s going to be a good long busy season.”
Stoffer said they struggled a little bit through COVID because there was no income.
“Which, it’s pretty tough to maintain a facility of this size,” he said.
“We have 40 acres that we have to look after — so with no income it was pretty tough, you know the grass didn’t know about COVID, it kept growing. The maintenance still had to happen even though there was nobody here. So that’s going to be nice we’re going to be able to generate a little bit of income again and get some stuff done.”
Softball Valley has replaced about dozen trees in the last couple of years and wanting to do more work on the park.
“We usually do a lot every year to upgrade the facility, not just maintenance,” he said.
“So the upgrades have mostly been put on hold for a little while. But now we’re going to get back to getting some stuff done and getting it back to the way it should be.”
Aside from the trees, a generator will be installed and shop work.
The aim this year is getting back to normalcy and then the hope is to bid for national championships in the future.