Youth baseball at Halls Ferry Park is once again in public hands.

After two years, the City of Vicksburg has ended its agreement to pay Aquila Group LLC to manage some aspects of its youth baseball and softball leagues at the park. The Vicksburg Parks and Recreation Department will resume its administrative duties, while the Vicksburg Warren Athletic Association and Vicksburg Girls Softball Association will run the various tournaments at the park each summer in addition to their spring recreational leagues.

Aquila “said they would do it if nobody else would,” Parks and Recreation director Joe Graves said. “But the VWAA board was really fired up about doing it like it used to be. I think it’s a positive because the community is getting involved,” he said.

Aquila was formed in 2007 by Good Samaritan Physical Therapy owner Tammy Davenport as part of an effort to build a new sports complex at the site of Halls Ferry Park. As that bid slowly fell apart, in 2008 Aquila moved into an administrative role of managing tournaments, scheduling umpires for league games and overseeing field maintenance — all duties previously overseen by the Parks and Rec Department. The new arrangement returns Aquila’s administrative duties to the city.

The VWAA and VGSA, which had operated their own youth baseball and softball leagues at Halls Ferry, will continue in that role.

“We had always handled registration, tryouts, scheduling the league games and things like that. The city took over scheduling of umpires and getting equipment. Our role hasn’t changed much,” VWAA president Tim Shelton said.

Shelton added that while he felt Aquila did a good job in its role, the VWAA board was happy to return to the old arrangement.

“As a whole we felt it would go a lot smoother if we took it over,” Shelton said. “Some people had issues with the way it was going. Plus it looks a lot better if you have a volunteer organization running a youth baseball league.”

The VWAA will benefit financially from the new arrangement. Under the old agreement, Aquila ran the weekend baseball tournaments that filled Halls Ferry’s fields from March to August. Aquila also kept the profits. For the Governor’s Cup, which draws about 100 teams over two weekends in July and August, that added up to $12,000 to $20,000 after expenses, VWAA vice president Scott Verhine said.

By resuming control of the tournaments, the VWAA can keep that money and pump it back into its programs.

“The main benefit is the volunteers that run the league will also run the tournaments, and that revenue will go to the leagues. We’ll have the money to send teams to all-star tournaments all over the state and to regional tournaments in the South,” Verhine said.

The VWAA plans to host as many as a half-dozen tournaments in addition to the Governor’s Cup this year. The first of those was held earlier this month and drew about 30 teams. A teeball league for 4-year-olds and a new competitive 9- and 10-year-olds’ league are also planned for this spring.

“We’re excited to know we have full control. We’re excited to be working with the city and adapting the league to what folks in the city want,” Shelton said.

Contact Ernest Bowker at ebowker@vicksburgpost.com