GARY | Ariele Dailey spent five and a half hours in a car Sunday afternoon on her way to The Steel Yard in Gary. The 10-year-old from Paris, Ky., has had Northwest Indiana on her calendar since last August.
"That's when this team started practicing for this," said her father, Rick Dailey, the coach of the central Kentucky team.
"This is so exciting," Ariele Dailey said. "I haven't been to a baseball game in two years, and I've never been to the (NSA) World Series."
More than 1,100 softball players were at the RailCats game Sunday, the kickoff celebration for this week's National Softball Association World Series in Northwest Indiana.
More than 200 teams within five age groups will participate in the event, which will host its opening ceremony tonight on the Crown Point square. NSA vice president Bill Hunter said he expects between 10,000 and 15,000 visitors in the area this week.
"It's a softball tournament with a party," Hunter said. "We want to make it family time, because many of the people have taken their vacation to be at this event. And the softball's going to be pretty good, too."
The players will compete across Northwest Indiana:
• The 8- and 10-and-under age divisions will play in Crown Point.
• The 12-and-under division will compete at Michigan City's Patriot Park and LaPorte's Kesling Park.
• The 14-and-under division will play at Hidden Lake Park in Merrillville and in Crown Point.
• The 16-and-under division will play at Portage's Imagination Glen Park.
Teams and fans from Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois and Missouri will be at these venues until the tournament concludes Friday.
At Sunday's RailCats game, there were pitching competitions, a home run-hitting contest and a base-running competition. There also was a Crazy Hair competition, of which the Duneland Flyers of Chesterton took full advantage.
The 14-and-under team used craft wire and Popsicle sticks to create hair that looked like palm trees -- including a lot of green dye on top, too.
"It took us a couple hours to get it to look like this," team member Paige Fossey said. "I don't know how long it will take to get it out."
