Endurance Tournament Raises $46,000 for Special Olympics

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Last month's three-day softball tournament at the Southern Illinois Center in Du Quoin to benefit Special Olympics was an endurance test.

Here are some of the numbers. Thirty-two teams played 76 games over a total of 55 hours.

And, here is the best number: The tournament raised $46,000 to benefit Southern Illinois' very special olympians. The $46,000 blows away last year's inaugural $30,000 and all pre-tournament predictions.

"It was a great success," said a most appreciative Bill Asbury, whose family founded the softball marathon in 2009.

"I got done at 5:30 a.m. that Monday morning and went over to my truck (to catch a nap). I woke up at 7:10 a.m. and there were 10 people already in the Southern Illinois Center taking things down," said Asbury. "I think I got 6 hours of sleep in 65 hours."

It's an amazing selfless testament to the huge charity that tournament represented.

"We had a previous winner and some new winners," he said. The word is spreading. Nearly 200 teams from across the Midwest have now applied to become part of the tournament. "We are almost positive that we will go two weekends next year," he said.

"We might add baseball and bring in 10 or 12 smaller units, splitting up the tournament with the younger bunch," he said.

"We will have the tournament again on the Martin Luther King holiday weekend and either the weekend before or the weekend after," he said.

"We got a lot of compliments by giving each team their own special olympian (who threw the first pitch during opening ceremonies," he said.

The kids were able to interact with our special olympic kids. The kids got to eat with the teams. They autographed stuff for them.

"The crowds were a lot bigger this year," he said.

He couldn't say enough about the host Du Quoin State Fairgrounds and the volunteers who made it all happen.

"We made $11,000 through ticket sales. We sold $7,000 the first night," he said.

"The kids in school raised $450," he said. One school fundraiser involved kids in Mrs. Denton's class at the Du Quoin Middle School building a snowman. The kids who donated the first $100 got to build the bottom of the snowman and Frosty just kept growing taller after that.

A team called the Chicago Dirt Devils won the decorated bat competition. They created a lighted Olympic Torch from a softball bat. It was amazing.

Having the 32 teams in Du Quoin created an economic impact on the town as well. Hotels and restaurants were all full.

Asbury said that in the charity tournament's off-season organizers are going to work on consolidating play.

Teams were driven to complete all of the games and play went up until almost 4 a.m. each morning.

"We made some mistakes on time," he said, but there was certainly no need to seek forgiveness considering all that the Asbury family, tournament officials, sponsors and setup and teardown crews brought to the event--all donated.

The tournament is getting the attention of Special Olympics committees all across the United States as an extraordinary exercise in community involvement and charity.