ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The City of Liberal’s Sports Tourism Department has undergone multiple changes and updates in the past several months and recently, Sports Tourism Director Orlando Padilla gave an update on how the department is doing since his coming on board.
“I started as the City of Liberal Sports Tourism Director in September 2023, and my main responsibility is to help host large sports events for the community. With these events, we want to attract athletes and their teams and families from out of town to Liberal, and a main goal is for these teams to stay at the hotels and spend money at the stores and restaurants and gas stations and other places in town, which is great for Liberal's overall economy,” Padilla said. “What I've been doing lately is sanctioning quite a few of my events, which hasn't been done before, and what's great about that is teams actually look for these types of events – if they see a certain logo on a tournament flyer, those are the events they flock to because they know there will be good competition. And those types of events also benefit those athletes, and their parents also want to see that good competition – you never want to have a situation where one team comes in and just rolls over everyone and dominates everything, because that doesn't actually benefit anyone else participating. I grew up in Satanta and graduated in 2007, and I played sports when I was a kid and all the way through high school, so sports were something I enjoyed participating in. I feel like participating in sports not only teaches you about the game itself, but also life skills – each sport teaches you how to deal with stress and come out of your comfort zone, among many other benefits, and I'm always very encouraging of anyone who wants to participate in any sport.”
Being in his new position has been rather exciting, Padilla said.
“Bringing new events to Liberal has been really exciting, and many of the events we've brought haven't ever been near Liberal before, so that's great. Either that, or we've been able to expand on events we've had in Liberal before, which is also really neat,” Padilla said. “The fact that we can bring in new, sanctioned events and bring new sports to Liberal, that's great because not a lot of people think of Southwest Kansas or even the Oklahoma Panhandle as necessarily a sports destination, so we want to change that.”
Padilla then talked about some of the bigger events the department was able to bring to Liberal.
“We've been able to bring in some United States Specialty Sports Association (USSSA) events, which are huge nationwide. Having a USSSA event, whether it's softball or baseball, is a big deal,” Padilla said. “Our first USSSA event was our Battle of the Oz softball tournament for the girls, and it was huge, it was our first sanctioned event in Liberal. And it was great because we pulled in teams from Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Kansas, among some others, and we were able to show off our facilities and showcase what Liberal has to offer in that regard. We had multiple teams tell us they were already planning to come back for our next event, which was amazing. Last year, I actually started kind of late working here, so I didn't have a lot of time to plan and set things up for this year. But I had time this year to plan for 2025, so next year, we're already planning for three USSSA-sanctioned softball events and three USSSA baseball events, which is amazing for the community. Another big event we're planning for next year will be our School Is Out, Softball Is Not tournament, and that will be next May. Texas teams especially flock to these types of events, and I've already got a handful of teams from there committed to coming, so I think it's going to be huge, and I've also got a couple Colorado teams committed. Baseball is also huge in this area, so having that sanctioned event should be great – our King of the Mound tournament was basically the tournament of the year last year, and that actually almost had to be cancelled because of inclement weather, but everything ultimately came together to make it happen, and it ended up going really well. That event alone brought in nearly 3,000 people to our facilities, and then our Battle of the Oz event brought in nearly 2,500 people, which was amazing.”
Padilla said there has even been some collaboration with some upcoming events.
“The Turkey Bowl has been an annual event for a while for youth football programs, and what's different about this year is we're partnering with Borger, Texas for this event. Borger hosts its tournament and Liberal hosts its tournament, but an issue that seems to crop up is there are some teams that have to decide which tournament to go to,” Padilla said. “This year's different because one weekend, they'll be hosting a 3rd/4th grade tournament and we'll host a 5th/6th grade tournament, and then shortly after that, there's a weekend when we'll flip-flop so all teams have the chance to make it to two tournaments. The Borger people were thrilled when I reached out to them and were completely on board with everything, and we had a Zoom meeting a couple weeks ago to make sure everything matches and everything is ready to go.”
So far, Padilla said, the Sports Tourism Department has seen a lot of growth, which he expects to continue.
“I have seen a lot of growth for our events during my time here so far, which is good news. Offering the different types of sanctioned events makes teams want to come here and compete, and we're happy to be able to make them happen,” Padilla said. “Another big event we hosted was just last month with our big soccer tournament that was sanctioned through the Kansas Youth Soccer Association, and we had more than 35 teams that came and competed, and they were from Dodge City, Liberal, Guymon, Okla., and even a few from Colorado, and it was great seeing all the fields at our sports complex completely full of athletes and their supporters. We're expecting big numbers with that event next year because of the positive imprint we left on everyone who came.”
Even with the success seen so far, however, Padilla said there is still work to be done.
“I have several major goals for Sports Tourism, including an extra gym space for basketball. We brought the Mid America Youth Basketball (MAYB] event to Liberal before, and that's absolutely, so a big goal of mine is to increase the number of facilities so we can have facilities for the community AND the teams that come for events,” Padilla said. “I'd also like to build more complexes and maybe have a turfed softball field, turfed baseball field, turfed soccer fields, etc., because teams LOVE knowing those facilities are available. Ultimately, I'd like to help make Liberal a sports tourism hub and let people know if you're looking for good events and good competition, Liberal is the place to come.”
Overall, Padilla said, he is looking forward to continuing to lead the Sports Tourism Department.
“We've got a lot of events coming up, and registration is either open or will soon be opened. I'd like to thank the City of Liberal for trusting me to help coordinate these types of events and putting me in this position to help the City's goals of bringing more people in,” Padilla said.
