It’s officially baseball and softball season, and Diamond Nation is open for tournaments.
If your team is considering entering a baseball or softball tournament at Diamond Nation in New Jersey, definitely do it. But before you go, check out our list of tips so you have a better experience.
What is Diamond Nation?
Diamond Nation is a sprawling 65-acre baseball and softball mecca nestled into rural Western New Jersey. On our way there, I motioned multiple times for my son in the backseat to check out horses we were passing or a rolled hay bale with a smiley face pasted on it. There was a roadside farm hawking eggs and other local goods.
Diamond Nation hosts regular tournaments, starting in frigid March and going all the way to frigid October. Click here for their tournament schedule.
It’s a clean, orderly, and well-maintained place. Scores of different teams mill around, all with unique team names and sharp uniforms. And you’ll see umpire crews walking swiftly by like pilots at the airport.
If your team is considering entering a tournament here, definitely do it. Diamond Nation should be on your Northeast tournament bucket list, along with:
1. Diamond Nation Lets You Use USSSA Bats and Doesn’t Require USA Bats
“Bring it and swing it!”
Yes, the killer Marucci CAT USSSA bat that you bought during a Christmas sale, but haven’t been able to use legally in a game, is legal at Diamond Nation. Unlike Little League and other youth baseball organizations, Diamond Nation doesn’t require USA bats. So you will be seeing home runs at the tournament. The outfield fences are also not a full 200 feet on the 50 70 fields. So I got extra excited during my son’s at bats, anticipating his first over-the-fence home run.
Difference between USA Bats and USSSA Bats
Leagues in our area have outlawed USSSA bats and adopted the USA bat standard, which strove to make bats that hit like wood ones, while maintaining the durability of metal bats. Yet changing over to the USA standard has been highly controversial.
For more on this topic, see our post on whether to out kids for using illegal bats.
2. Bring Turf Shoes and Leave Your Dirt Cleats at Home Because Diamond Nation has All Turf Fields
This is important to know, because they won’t let you on the fields in regular cleats. Also, you can’t just assume your kid’s turf shoes still fit if they haven’t worn them in a while. Our tournament was early in the season, and I assumed my son’s turf shoes from last year would be too small. Just to make sure, I dug them up and had him try them on. I was shocked when they still fit. So don’t assume anything, but make sure you have the turf shoes.
My son has extra wide feet (I used to call then cornbread feet when he was little). The only cleats that fit him are New Balance. If you’re in the same boat, check out the New Balance cleats here.
3. Bring a Folding Chair or You’re Going to be Doing a Lot of Standing
There are virtually no stands at Diamond Nation. They pack the fields so closely together they just don’t have the room for traditional bleachers. Even with your own chair, they limit the spots to put them. I like watching games from the quiet of the outfield, but at Diamond Nation they obscure the outfield walls so you can’t see through them (maybe for liability reasons, given all the home runs). The walls are also too tall to peer over.
This gets at one takeaway from my two days at Diamond Nation. It’s a great experience for the players and coaches. As for the spectators, not so much.
4. Leave the Siblings at Home or They’re Going to Ruin Your Visit
There is literally nothing for your other kids to do at Diamond Nation. Unless your little ones are going to be satisfied for six hours making endless trips to the Rita’s Ice stall, or they can be on a device for the whole time, they will drive you crazy. I thankfully made the trip alone with my son on both days, but I witnessed several temper tantrums from exhausted and bored siblings.
Next to me on the first day, a couple struggled to watch the game while their younger kids took turns choking each other.
Call the grandparents. Hire a babysitter. Leave them home!
5. Your Team Will Have Virtually No Time to Warm Up Before Your Game
On our first day of the tournament, we had an early morning 8:00 a.m. game. It was horrible from the perspective of having to wake up at five in the morning to be there in time to warm up. Yet, if you don’t have that first time slot, your team literally has 15 minutes to warm up before your game starts. The game before yours ends, you rush on the field and stretch, throw a little, and the umpire hollers “play ball.” They don’t mess around with keeping the games moving.
On our second day there, when we didn’t have the first slot, our team met at the main batting cage, an open-air roofed structure with three lanes. We got on line with a bunch of other teams, and the queue moved slowly.
We were close to the front, when the coach made the decision we should just head to the field because our game started in 30 minutes. It turned out to be a mistake, because another game was taking place on our field, and we wound up just waiting around for it to end, when we could have at least gotten some hitting in.
Practice at a Local Field Before Arriving at Diamond Nation
If you have the time, your team might want to try to warm up at a local field before heading to Diamond Nation, or between games. Check out the map below for directions to some fields by the facility.
More Thoughts on Diamond Nation
Read below for more about the facility:
- Parking. The parking is bad. The one parking lot fills up by 8:30 a.m., and you’re left to park in the grass field across from the facility or along the side of the road. This can be a hassle when you’re hauling fold-up chairs, a cooler, and a bag of stuff to keep your other kids busy, not to mention your player’s baseball equipment.
- Bring cash. They charge $5 per person to enter the facility as a spectator. On our second day there, we had to park down the road (see Parking above), and we wound up entering the facility through a side entrance, where there was no one there to ask for $5. I’m not suggesting people do that, just saying.
- Bring food. The food options are limited and overpriced. Unless you want to pay $3 for a small Gatorade, bring a cooler. There’s also a Dunkin Donuts with a drive thru about five minutes away from the park.
- They don’t always operate the scoreboards. If you’re playing on a 50 70 field, they don’t always operate the scoreboards. Read our post on using GameChanger’s Team Manager App to score your games.
- Ringers. The coach of our club team brought in a couple kids to beef up our team. These kids had no previous affiliation to our club. One of the kids was amazing, probably the best youth hitter I’ve seen. In the two-day tournament, I don’t think he made one out. The other kid threw hard, but couldn’t field or hit. After he pitched, I think he made four errors in the field and didn’t get a hit. But bringing in mercenary players (they only play for your team if you agree that they don’t have to pay for the tournament), raises the existential question: if you win a tournament because you brought in ringers, did you really win?
Do you have any tips for visiting Diamond Nation or Other Tournaments? Let us know in the comments!
For information about the emotional side of baseball, see:
- How to Manage Your Kid’s Baseball Tantrums and Meltdowns
- Anger Management and Youth Baseball: How to Calm Down
- How to Stop Being a Crazy Baseball Dad
- 5 Ways Youth Baseball Teams Cheat, and How to Respond
- How to Be a Good Baseball Dad in the Backyard
- How to Deal with Umpires in Youth Baseball
- 4 Ways to Respond to a Coach Playing Favorites
- Is It Now Fashionable to Hate On Baseball Dads?
For information on hitting, see:
- How to Get Out of a Hitting Slump
- 4 Best Baseball Batting Aids (No. 3 is Free)
- 4 Hitting Drills You Need to Do Before Every Game
- 4 Old School Baseball Drills You Need to Be Using
For information on pitching, see:
Can you use a mobility scooter if you are disabled
A person who works there said it was okay for disabled person to use scooter.