Plans have a funny old way of not running according to themselves.

It seems like every time I plan some kind of big to-do some kind of monkey wrench flies in and messes up the entire system.

At least I know I’m not alone in this problem, and misery loves company as they say.

Belgreen hosted the tournament for 1A Area 13 on Monday and Tuesday.

Full coverage of the tournament will be in Saturday’s edition of The Franklin County Times.

There was no problem with the tournament format or the site.

The thing that ruined the flow of the games was something completely unforeseen; the length of the games.

An average high school softball game runs seven innings, usually taking about an hour and a half.

That was the time allotted for each game.

That plan flew out the window in the very first game.

Vina played Phillips in game one on day one, and the hour and a half predicted play time was not correct at all.

It ended up taking the two teams two hours and thirty minutes to end the contest.

Hackleburg and Phillips in a later game took over two hours to complete five innings as well.

Those two games lasted over four hours, when they should have only accounted for three.

This also doesn’t factor in the warm-up time for the next two teams before that game.

All told it took 10 hours and 15 minutes to finish the four games of day one. It was planned to only take around six.

This is no one’s fault, it’s juts the nature of the game. It did make for a long day for the coaches, players, fans and one tall redheaded guy, among others.

There were girls lying down under the bleachers and in any found shade around the park due to the heat.

The temperature went into the high 80s, which didn’t do much to make the long day pleasant.

Day one started at 10 a.m. and finished at 8:15 p.m. There may have only been four games in those hours, but I’m sure that it felt like much more had gone on in that time.

Day two had yet to be played at the time I wrote this.

One can only hope for a shorter event time, if nothing else so everyone involved can stay out of the sun for a few more hours than on Monday.

J.R. Tidwell is sports editor for The Franklin County Times. He can be reached at (256) 332-1881, ext. 31.