LAURINBURG — The Optimist Club of Laurinburg is looking into the last-minute change of its scholarship softball tournament after learning of a larger local tournament that will take place at the same time.
The Phillip Hayes Memorial Softball Tournament was scheduled for the weekend before Labor Day, but on Wednesday the club learned of a larger tournament being held at the Parks and Recreation fields. Because of that, the Optimist Club didn’t have many teams register for its tournament.
“We had four teams register and we can’t host a tournament with just four teams,” said Secretary Bear Hughes. “Last year we had to do a single day event which we raised $2,000 that we wouldn’t have had otherwise, but we can get $5,000 to $6,000 over the full weekend.”
Currently, the club does not have a date for the rescheduling of the tournament but is currently looking into the best options to not affect the upcoming start of the school year.
The tournament began in 2010 as a way to not only honor Phillip Hayes, but also to raise scholarship money that is given to local students, since all of the money from the tournament goes to the scholarship.
Recently two Scotland County students received scholarships from the Optimist Club of Laurinburg to help their college careers — Nathan Dubbs, who will be attending North Carolina State, and Morgan Hatchell, who will be attending North Greenville University.
