The widely rumored move of state baseball semifinals and finals to Akron was made official by the Ohio High School Athletic Association on Thursday.
The OHSAA’s board of directors unanimously voted to move the 2019 state tournament to Canal Park in Akron. The 7,630-seat stadium is home to the Akron RubberDucks, a Class AA minor-league affiliate of Cleveland.
The board also unanimously voted to have the state football finals remain at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton this year.
The state baseball tournament has been held at Huntington Park in Columbus since the stadium opened in 2009 and was previously held Cooper Stadium, the Columbus Clippers’ former home.
The finals are being moved away from Huntington Park this season due to the stadium being unavailable. The Clippers traditionally had worked with their AAA International League to insure they had no home games the weekend of the OHSAA state finals, usually the first weekend of June.
The OHSAA votrf last year to expand the length of the upcoming baseball season by one week, and the Clippers were unable to adjust their schedule.
“The Clippers and Huntington Park have been great hosts, but our baseball season is a week later now and it conflicts with the Clippers’ 2019 home schedule,” OHSAA executive director Jerry Snodgrass OHSAA said in a release. “We looked at many sites, but for several reasons, including similar schedule conflicts at other locations, we believe that Canal Park is the best choice.”
The 2019 baseball semifinals and finals for the OHSAA’s four divisions is scheduled for June 6-8 at the Akron stadium.
Akron is also home to the state softball finals, which have been held at Firestone Stadium since 2007. Those finals will be held May 30 to June 1.
The state football finals have been at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium since the complex opened in 2017 on the spot of the former Fawcett Stadium. The 23,000-seat stadium is adjacent to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Stark County hosted the football finals at Fawcett Stadium and Massillon’s Paul Brown Tiger Stadium from 1990 through 2013. The finals were held at Ohio Stadium from 2014-2016.
“We have a great site in Canton for the football finals and we are pleased to return there in December,” Snodgrass said. “We will continue to talk with Ohio State and the Greater Columbus Sports Commission about hosting in the future, but we wanted to make a decision this winter regarding 2019 and we would need more time to come to an agreement with Columbus.”
Area programs have been frequent participants in the state baseball tournament since it moved to Huntington Park. Fort Loramie won Div. IV state titles in 2010 and 2018, while Minster won state titles in 2011, 2012 and 2017. Russia advanced the D-IV finals in 2017.
