Teams and supporters from across the state arrived in Demopolis Friday, taking part in the banquet that unofficially kicked off the Cal Ripken 10U State Tournament.

City officials have been gearing up for this event for almost a year now, trying to make things run as smoothly as possible for the weekend’s events.

With the planning stages passed, tournament director Art Evans and company have been working hard to have everything perfect for the events.

“All the teams are ready to go. We seem to have all of the hotels around the city booked up pretty well and we are expecting a bunch of people to come in,” said Evans Tuesday. “Right now everything is falling into place, but that hasn’t been without hard work.”

Evans has had a lot of help with the tournament, but he gives much praise to the parents of the players on the Demopolis 10-year-old team as they have been responsible for getting welcoming banquet together.

“The parents have done a tremendous job getting reservations at the civic center for our banquet,” said Evans.

The banquet took place at 6:30 p.m. and had opening remarks given by Demopolis Mayor Mike Grayson. Door prizes that were donated from across the city were given to lucky winners during the dinner, which was catered by Chris Cameron.

“We were given some very good door prizes from people in Demopolis. We are thankful for those sponsors who provided them for us,” Evans said.

Today will begin actual play for the teams, with the opening ceremonies beginning on New Era field at the Sports-Plex at 10 a.m.

Ten teams will be split into two pools for the first three days.

The Black Warrior pool will consist of Monrovia, Florence, Linden, Matthews Park and Alex City.

The Tombigbee pool will have Madison, Gilbertown, Theodore, Attalla and the host team, Demopolis.

The top two teams will advance from each pool and face off for the right to go to the championship game.

All of the games will be played on the New Era field and Field 6 at the Sports-Plex.

Tournament passes, T-shirts and an official tournament ball will be available for purchase each day at the games.

Tickets will also be available each day. Tournament passes will be $20 per person and will allow the buyer entrance into all 23 games, for children aged 6-12 passes will be $15. For daily passes, adults will pay $7 and children aged 6-12 will pay $4. Children under six will be able to attend without cost.