As the Lehigh Valley begins to slowly return to some semblance of normal, a sure sign of summer – kids on a baseball field – could be part of the return.

Area coaches and athletic directors have put together a plan for a high school baseball tournament for early August. The tournament would have 32 teams from local schools placed into eight pools of four teams each, with teams guaranteed of playing at least three games.

Dan Villanti, an assistant director of alumni relations at DeSales University and the director of the Rising Stars travel baseball program, came up with the idea and enlisted the assistance of Liberty coach Andy Pitsilos and Notre Dame (Green Pond) coach Mike Bedics to help assemble teams from both the East Penn Conference and Colonial League.

The group was able to navigate through a myriad of issues including everything from PIAA rules to insurance for players. The tournament is scheduled for August 3-9 at various sites across the Lehigh Valley.

One issue that remains to be worked out is exactly when high school teams could return to the field for organized practices. Aligning with state regulations, the PIAA has not opened practices for any sport, but that permission could come early next month if all goes as planned. That would give teams time to prepare for the tournament.

“As soon as we get the go-ahead, hopefully in July, we’ll have some informal workouts and things like that and a couple practices leading up to it,” said Northwestern Lehigh head coach Duran Porrino. “It’s summer, so it will just be a case of try to make it if you can. But they didn’t get to see each other all spring, so I think they’ll be looking forward to it.”

One key part of the tournament is that graduating seniors will be allowed to participate with their team. With the season being canceled in early April, seniors were deprived of their final season of high school ball. The tournament will give them an opportunity to gather for at least a few games before heading off to college.

For Northwestern, the tournament could serve as an opportunity to prove that their status as preseason favorites in the Colonial League and District 11 was justified. With a deep pitching staff and plenty of offensive talent, Porrino was especially excited coming into the season and is looking forward to the opportunity to showcase his team’s talent.

“Trust me,” said Porrino. “If we ended up winning this thing, I’m fairly confident I’d get some type of banner or something like that to recognize the accomplishment. As a coach, it’s a lot of games in a short amount of days – seven games in about a week – but for us, we feel good about it just because we have so much pitching.”

The Tigers will be in a pool with Emmaus, Salisbury and Saucon Valley and will play each of those teams.

The top two teams in each pool advance to play in the Sweet 16, which would be a single-elimination round, as would the Elite 8, which would both be played on the same day. The semifinals and finals will be played on the final day of the tournament.

“It’s always a competition as to which league [EPC or Colonial] is better and it’s the same thing in football and every sport. Our kids are just really excited for the opportunity,” said Porrino.

The tournament dates will offer an official run-up to the heat acclimation period for high school football, which begins on August 10. It’s likely that the PIAA will do everything possible to be sure that football teams have a full amount of time for the heat acclimation phase of practices, so it follows that they will allow baseball activities the week prior to that.

There are still some details that need to fall into place, but Porrino is excited and confident about the chances of the tournament taking place.

He noted that with football practices set to begin the day after the tournament, there is some reason for confidence that the tournament will be allowed to take place.

“I find it hard to believe that if the tournament ends on a Sunday and heat acclimation begins on Monday for football, then more or less what you’re saying is football isn’t going to start either,” said Porrino. “So, that’s what’s sort of giving me confidence about this.”