Playing softball is all about the fun, Jesus Grant shouted to the Eudora Kean High School students on the field Friday as the 14th annual Ruby Rutnik Memorial Tournament began. It runs through Sunday at the Winston Wells Ballfield in Cruz Bay.
"The children play better when their parents are out there to support them," said Grant, whose daughter plays for Kean.
The tournament kicked off with Kean playing Charlotte Amalie High School, a fierce rivalry.
"We’re here to beat the Chickenhawks. They think they’re better than us," Manique Carty, 15 and a sophomore at Eudora Kean, referring to Charlotte Amalie.
Eudora Kean senior, Kiannah Smith, 17, was firm that she was there to "defend my school."
Across the field, the Charlotte Amalie Chickenhawks were equally firm. "We’re here to win. We’re undefeated," Keshma James, a 19-year-old senior at Charlotte Amalie, said.
Tiffany Joseph, 17 and a Charlotte Amalie senior, talked about how she played softball for most of her life.
"I love the game," she said.
Other teams expected to compete at the tournament include Central High School and Educational Complex on St. Croix, Antilles School on St. Thomas and Elmore Stoutt High School on Tortola. Stoutt won the tournament last year.
As the action heated up, a crowd started to gather. Sharon Roberts, who lives most of the year in the San Diego area but spends time on St. John, reminisced about the students she used to teach at Julius E. Sprauve School, located adjacent to the field.
"I still like watching kids play," she said.
Delia Thomas, who had a reputation as a top notch ballplayer when she was younger, wasn’t giving any tips to her niece, Kean pitcher Carissa Paris.
"I just came to check it out," she said.
While the young women were there to have fun, others remembered Ruby Rutnik. A star pitcher at Antilles School, she died Dec. 4, 1996, in a car crash while attending American University in Washington, D.C. The tournament is held every year around her April 9 birthday.
"We’re keeping the memory of Ruby alive," Peter Muilenburg said when asked what brought him out.
The tournament is a fundraiser for the Ruby Rutnik Scholarship Fund and the Love City Pan Dragons. The Pan Dragons sell food to fund their operations.
"Conch, barbecue chicken, fish, and salmon balls. Johnny cake, fried chicken and a variety of drinks," Ira Wade, a Pan Dragon organizer. said.
Gayle Deller, who with her husband George, helps to organize the tournament, taught Ruby when she was a Sprauve School student. As she talked about sportsmanship and Ruby’s spirit, she reached in her pocket to give $1 to a boy. She said that because the tournament operates on a limited budget, she pays area children to retrieve lost balls that go over the fence.
"We only have so many balls to last the tournament," she said.
Ruby’s father, Andy Rutnik, said that while people remember Ruby for her prowess as a softball pitcher, she was also an intellectual with a social conscience.
"She was eulogized as someone with a tremendous empathy for the world," he said.
