Want to spend a weekend watching live sports without paying a small fortune for tickets or fighting traffic for hours? You’re about to be in luck.
Plant City-area parks will host a familiar slate of sports tournaments in the coming weeks beyond the usual crop of youth baseball events. There are two coming up in January, starting as early as next weekend, and three more in February to keep on the radar. All of the events have come to Plant City before.
The first big tourney of 2020 is the Tampa Bay Ultimate Frisbee Janus XXVII Tournament, which runs from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Jan. 18 and 19 and will be held at both Ellis-Methvin Park and the neighboring Otis M. Andrews Sports Complex. Last year, the tourney’s first in Plant City, 37 teams came to town to compete in a sport that combines elements of rugby and basketball with a frisbee.
Just two days after that tournament ends, the International Senior Softball Association-World Baseball Softball Confederation World Tournament of Champions will start and use several ball fields in Plant City for six days. The tournament, which brings some of the United States’ top softballers age 50 and up together for games all over the Tampa Bay area, runs from Jan. 21-26 and will primarily use fields at the Randy L. Larson Softball Four-Plex and Mike Sansone Park with start times from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. This will be the tournament’s ninth year of hosting games in Plant City.
Plant City FC’s annual President’s Cup Strawberry Classic returns to town from Feb. 15-16 and will use fields at Ellis-Methvin Park and the Otis M. Andrews complex with games starting between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. The tournament will feature boys and girls teams as young as U9 and as old as U19 in two division levels of play. Florida State Premier League soccer action comes to Ellis-Methvin Park the following weekend, from Feb. 29 through March 1, with start times from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Last and certainly not least, the 2020 Spring Training Showcases for the National Club Baseball Association and National Club Softball Association will start Feb. 29 and bring dozens of college club teams to town over the course of four weeks. That tourney will primarily use fields at Mike Sansone Park and has also hosted games at the MLK complex and Plant City High School in the past.