Pittsburg State athletics director Anthony Crespino has been bursting with pride.

In a 12-hour span early this week, Pittsburg State was awarded the host role for both baseball and softball sub-regionals later this week – the first time ever for the baseball program and the second time for the softball program.

“It’s awesome,” Crespino said. “This is the fun part. This is why you do this.

“Honestly, it kind of reminds me of when I was doing this in football for a long time with team travel and bowl games and playoff games and the national championship (when he was at TCU), this is what’s fun. You enjoy the challenge. You want to put on a first-class experience for everybody, have people come into Pittsburg, stay in our hotels, eat in our restaurants and show off Southeast Kansas.

Both four-team, double-elimination tournaments begin on Thursday, and they will end on Saturday for softball and Saturday or Sunday for baseball.

The baseball team is the No. 1 seed and plays Arkansas Tech in the tournament opener at 3 p.m. Thursday. The second team is seeded second and faces Rogers State on Thursday at 2.

With six teams and their fans coming to town, throw in PSU graduation on Friday and Saturday, vacant hotel rooms are nowhere to be found.

“We had rooms reserved in Webb City and Joplin for teams for this week,” Crespino said. “Then if we would be fortunate to win softball or baseball and get to host, we have all the rooms for next week here (for the super regionals).”

While it would be great if the Gorilla teams could play at different times for the fans, it’s practically impossible to pull that off. Plus, the NCAA determines many of the game times.

Nevertheless, “I think it’s going to be a great environment all around,” Crespino said.

Of course, hosting big events – and multiple big events – are nothing new to the PSU staff.

“Football playoff games, basketball regional, we had MIAA baseball last year,” Crespino said. “I got to see a lot of that, and luckily we have a great staff of people who have been here a long time who know how to run these things.

“They are helping me, and Jim Johnson (former athletics director) has been a great mentor and helped. He spent a lot of time just talking me through everything. I appreciate him.”