With five athletic kids, Plant City resident Bob Mondoux knows life in sports can be costly.
Equipment, team dues and fees for travel and tournaments all add up for any parent with kids active in sports.
Mondoux now spends his days finding ways to help cut down on that aspect, sanctioning leagues and travel tournaments for baseball and softball throughout Florida.
Mondoux started Global Sports Alliance in 2010, with partners O.J. Simpson from Washington and Paul Griffin, from New York. He now serves as the Florida state director as well as the president of the national office of GSA, which became an incorporated non-profit in 2011.
“We want to provide competitive tournaments where teams can afford to play,” Mondoux said.
Prior to his involvement with GSA, Mondoux worked as a director with both the United States Specialty Sports Association and Nations Baseball. After signing on with Global Sports Authority, a Georgia-based organization that hosted softball tournaments, he and partners Simpson and Griffin decided to form their own, non-profit version of GSA, naming it Global Sports Alliance.
“With the economy the way it is, we had to bring the cost down and make it affordable to play,” he said.
They did just that, organizing travel tournaments for less than half the cost of competing organizations in Florida as well as states across the country. Now, GSA sanctions tournaments across the nation for baseball, softball and even soccer.
Mondoux also wanted to use GSA’s non-profit status to help rebuild ballparks nationwide.
“Cities and counties are strapped for money, including right here in Plant City,” he said. “We wanted to find a way to not only host tournaments but raise money for the places where we’re holding the tournaments and for the home teams of those areas.”
As a proud resident of Plant City, Mondoux wanted to help out local schools, teams and organizations in the place he calls home. GSA teamed up with the Kiwanis Club of Plant City in December. That tournament collected 150 Christmas presents for local kids in need.
“They were ecstatic over it, and we were so happy to be able to help out,” he said.
With two boys at Plant City High School and his oldest a graduate and a former baseball player at PCHS,
Mondoux wanted to use GSA as a way for the Raiders baseball team to raise funds. After reaching out to new head coach Mike Fryrear, PCHS players assisted with running two GSA tournaments last fall, including working the gate and concessions. Those two tournaments alone raised $3,800 for the program.
GSA has also hosted tournaments at PCHS and Strawberry Crest High School and has plans to continue to do so, so the money raised can go back locally. Mondoux also said he hopes to move the corporate office for GSA here in Plant City.
“Plant City is my home, and we want to keep the money here,” he said.
To avoid over-saturation, GSA hosts no more than one tournament per month in one area. This approach has seen large numbers, including 155 teams in the first GSA Fall State Championships in 2011, held at Mike Sansone Park. Last year’s fall championships had 133 teams participate — only because there were not enough fields available for more to register.
Mondoux also believes in promoting fairness in his tournaments.
“We want to give teams that might not have a chance to play in a championship game that opportunity,” he said.
“We also make sure teams don’t play more than three games in one day. We don’t believe in a team having to play four times in a day.”
GSA’s next tournament will be smaller, featuring about 40 teams for the Winter Warm Up Jan. 18 to 20, in Plant City. Seven other tournaments are planned for Plant City this year, including Grand Slam II, Summer Slam III,
Hope for the Holidays and the GSA Fall State Championships.
GSA also has tournaments planned in Tampa, Sarasota, Leesburg and Avon Park, among others.
For more information about local tournaments, visit gsafloridabaseball.com or visit the national site, gsanational.org.
