The Demopolis Middle School baseball team will host its annual tournament at the Sports-Plex Saturday, an event that was initially rained out on March 13.

“It was extremely critical. We had one home date before this tournament. Basically, this was our second home date and we’ve had six trips away. If weather affects a date, we don’t generally make it up,” DMS head coach Trey Smith said. “But we’ve only had one home date.”

The round robin tournament was originally slated to feature Sweet Water, Martin Middle and Wilson Hall Middle school of Grove Hill.

“It was a weekend tournament where the teams we had in it had other tournaments to be in this weekend,” Smith said. In order to salvage the date, Smith had to find two other schools to replace Sweet Water and Martin Middle.

“(Centreville) and Rock Quarry didn’t have anywhere else to play this weekend,” Smith said. (Wilson Hall) is really excited to come. They’ve been here the last three years.”

Smith, whose team is 1-10, is looking to make some strides on its own home turf at the Sports-Plex.

“We’re going to be competitive, I think, in all three of them,” Smith said. “Outo f the 10 or 11 players we rotate in to bat, five of them are batting over 400. Where we have struggled this year has been defense. It has been less than average.”

With those difficulties in mind, Smith and his team focused on defense for the bulk of its practice time this week.

Demopolis will open the tournament at 9 a.m. against Wilson Hall before challenging Centreville at 11 a.m. The final game of the day for the Demopolis Middle School Tigers will start at 1:30 p.m. when they face Rock Quarry out of Tuscaloosa.

Admission to the tournament will be $6 per person.