2008 Red Rock Committee Response to the City of St. George
January 19, 2008
St. George, UT
To Whom It May Concern:
Please find letter as attached concerning the cancellation of the 2008 Red Rock Invitational by St. George, Utah.
All media outlets have our permission to publish and distribute the letter or any information contained in the letter.
Please forward to all involved in past present and future Red Rock Tournament events.
We will be hosting a bigger and better Red Rock Invitational Tournament in 2009 in an exciting new location yet to be confirmed.
Please accept our sincere regrets for the extremely late cancellation of the 2008 event.
I believe that Mr. Hackmeister will be sending out a document tomorrow as described in this attached letter.
Regards in Softball,
2008 Red Rock Invitational Tournament Committee
Roy Stout
Bob Henning
Ken Hackmeister
January 19, 2008
Attention: City of St. George - Leisure Services
Dear Sirs:
We are in receipt of your e-mail sent from Steven Bingham, City of St. George Recreation Director, canceling the 2008 Red Rock Tournament. In fact that notice has been sent to all of our media outlets of which a few have already posted and others will as well. Those media outlets have permission to post this and any other communications as well.
On behalf of all the teams, players, umpires and spectators, our 2008 Red Rock Host Committee would like to thank the City of St. George for their support of the Red Rock Tournament over the past seven years in a row. This year we had either serious interest or confirmation of attendance from 19 teams in eight different states as well as two teams from Canada and one from Mexico.
Because of the lateness of your decision to cancel, we believe that the City of St. George had a moral responsibility to host the 2008 Red Rock Tournament and then go ahead and cancel it for 2009 if you were facing challenges because so many people had already made plans to attend.
We fully understand that you have budget constraints being placed upon you, however you made us an offer and we agreed to your offer and we were still cancelled. That is flat out wrong.
Already we are receiving notice from many that they have already purchased non-refundable airfares to attend, two of which are from our Internet Streaming Host Broadcaster and the official tournament photographer. There will be many more as we warned.
You and your group were made aware that there are also umpires in the same position. Who knows how many more will be coming forward with non-refundable tickets?
Certainly, now that the City of St. George has officially cancelled this year’s event, the news will spread very quickly. And with the notification of the tournament being cancelled so late and in such an untimely manner, there will be many repercussions from players, teams and umpires.
Our committee is preparing a statement for release concerning what has led to this decision, including a timeline of events, as well as snippets from e-mails and conference calls leading up to the untimely and late cancellation of the 8th Annual Red Rock Tournament.
This statement will be distributed all over the world via our websites and e-mail circuit, to you and your group at Leisure Services, the mayor, city council and in a shorter release we will make to the citizens of St. George via local radio and press.
This all could have been avoided by simply hosting the 2008 Red Rock tournament.
We are truly saddened by the timing of your decision and of the loss of a very popular World Class Major Men's softball tournament host by St. George City.
Rest assured that we will pursue re-imbursement of all non-refundable tickets and expenses occurred by anyone 'officially' involved in the tournament.
Roy Stout, Bob Henning and Ken Hackmeister
2008 Red Rock Tournament Committee
