Hidden Valley Integrity of the Game Evolution Statewide Youth Sports Research Architecture

Research Evolution

How one facility question became a statewide research system

The research began as a practical attempt to understand historical activity at Buck Thomas Park in Moore, Oklahoma. The public USSSA portal contained event facts, but it did not provide a usable historical export. That limitation created the first research problem: how to convert fragmented public records into a defensible longitudinal dataset.

Buck Thomas Park feasibility question

A local facility inquiry created the need to reconstruct actual historical USSSA activity rather than rely on anecdote.

Manual reconstruction begins

Public event records were transcribed event by event and division by division.

Statewide systems insight

Directors, facilities, municipalities, counties and satellite venues could be analyzed as one connected activity network.

Historical URL discovery

Older USSSA seasons could be reached back to 2001, expanding the research horizon dramatically.

AI-assisted extraction

Scale increased—but so did the visibility of unresolved question-mark team-count records.

6,574-division evidentiary crisis

Temporary estimates were tested, then rejected because completeness could not outrank defensibility.

Deeper portal discovery

Additional hyperlinks revealed exact information hidden several navigation layers beneath the first public display.

Complete rebuild

The project was reconstructed division by division into the current Hidden Valley Integrity of the Game architecture.

Three Generations

Three phases, three different research problems, three different solutions

The present dataset is not simply a larger spreadsheet. Each phase represents a material change in research method.

Phase I

Pre-Draft

2016–2024

The manual-reconstruction era. Public USSSA event records were transcribed and normalized into a structured research dataset.

Purpose: determine whether a facility opportunity could be evaluated using actual historical activity.

Challenge: no practical portal export, high manual workload, limited visible historical seasons.

Discovery: dispersed public records could reconstruct facility and director histories.

Solution: build the first event-division spreadsheet manually.

Result: the inquiry expanded from one park to a statewide systems study.

Phase II

AIUSSSA

2001–2024

The expansion era. Historical URL patterns opened access to older USSSA seasons, and AI-assisted extraction increased scale.

Purpose: reconstruct the full Oklahoma historical record back to 2001.

Challenge: 6,574 divisions displayed question marks for team status.

Attempted solution: representative team counts and average entry fees.

Concern: thousands of estimated or “phantom” teams would weaken evidentiary credibility.

Final decision: reject the estimates and keep investigating the source structure.

Phase III

Hidden Valley

2001–2026

The reconstruction-and-verification era. Deeper portal hyperlinks revealed exact underlying data for records that appeared unresolved.

Purpose: replace uncertainty with a source-traceable statewide architecture.

Breakthrough: exact team counts, fees, minimum games and related details were recoverable deeper in the portal.

Solution: rebuild instead of patch.

Process: division-by-division manual verification of 20,316 records.

Result: the current research infrastructure supporting reports, analyses and oversight work.

The Methodological Turning Point

The 6,574-division problem changed the research

The most important validation story is not that the project never encountered uncertainty. It is that uncertainty forced a change in method.

Completeness was not allowed to outrank defensibility. When thousands of divisions could not initially be verified, a temporary estimation method was tested and then rejected. The research continued until deeper portal records supplied exact underlying information for many of those divisions.

The transcript describes the portal as having “onion layers of deception.” For formal publication, the stronger evidentiary language is that the public interface could make historical information difficult to discover without deeper navigation. Interface complexity by itself is not proof of intentional deception.

Research Architecture

A 65-column schema designed for traceability, analysis and future evidence

HVIOG is a research schema rather than a conventional accounting ledger. It separates source records, calculated fields, standardized models, future placeholders and unresolved transaction questions.

Identity & Source

Tournament IDs, event/division IDs, dates, sport, stature, age division, status fields and source URLs.

Participation & Pricing

Teams entered, displayed status, minimum games, advertised entry fees, total team-entry-fee calculations and standardized player counts.

Facility & Geography

Facility, address, municipality, county, state, satellite combinations and public-school classification.

Officiating

Minimum game demand, umpires per game, modeled assignments, standardized pay and modeled officiating cost.

Event Economics

Modeled fans, admission, gate, concessions, gross event activity and modeled event net.

Sanctioning

Modeled Oklahoma team sanction fees, national event sanction fees and combined sanction-fee structure.

Economic Impact

Day-trip and overnight assumptions, day impact, overnight impact and total modeled economic impact.

Future Research

Facility rental, lease income, stay-to-play relationships, transaction allocation and documentary evidence fields.

Evidence Standards

Not every field has the same evidentiary status

The credibility of the research depends on keeping unlike evidence categories analytically distinct.

1

Public-Source / Reconstructed

Event identity, director, facility, sport, dates, divisions, advertised entry fees, recovered team counts and source URLs.

2

Directly Calculated

Arithmetic derived from documented source inputs, such as advertised entry fee multiplied by teams entered.

3

Standardized Research Models

Roster assumptions, gate, concessions, officiating, sanction fees and economic-impact estimates.

4

Operational Understandings

State Tournament remittance splits, director-retained portions, state/regional/national allocations and rebates that require records.

5

Unknown / Placeholder

Lease income, rental, stay-to-play, tax treatment, deposits and other accounting questions until independently documented.

A modeled dollar is not inherently weak. It becomes misleading only if its modeled status is concealed.

Current Baseline

The present statewide research picture

The September 5, 2026 HVIOG dataset controls quantitative reporting where spoken statistics differ.

$20,872,737

Advertised baseball team-entry-fee activity.

$15,466,893

Advertised softball team-entry-fee activity.

424,234

Modeled minimum games.

777,569

Modeled umpire assignments.

$31,095,360

Modeled umpire compensation at the standardized study rate.

$68,189,690

Modeled gate activity.

$34,094,845

Modeled concession activity.

$92,808,682

Modeled economic impact.

Director Classification

Why “associated with” is more defensible than “received”

Federal litigation concerning USSSA provides external organizational context for how directors and state/local representatives may be classified and how event-related revenue can move through the organization.

Independent-contractor structure

The Second Amended Complaint describes USSSA Directors as independent contractors rather than employees in some operational contexts, and describes state/local representatives as typically independent contractors. Those statements are part of a federal pleading and should be cited as such.

Revenue allocation matters

A director listed in the public event record can be associated with advertised team-entry-fee activity without necessarily retaining the entire amount personally or through an affiliated entity.

Role is not the same as receipt

Future profiles should distinguish displayed event director, area director, state director, regional leadership, national role and affiliated business entity.

Oklahoma / Wally Fortuna

The updated federal filing describes Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma as one component of an alleged USSSA Midwest structure directed by Wally Fortuna. That does not establish that Wally personally received all Oklahoma event revenue.

The Financial Ripple

The next question is not simply how much activity occurred—it is where the money went

The research now moves toward organizational money-flow reconstruction.

Teams & FamiliesEntry fees, gate spending, concessions, travel and participation costs.

Event / Listed DirectorDirector-associated event activity; actual retained share requires documentation.

Oklahoma State OfficeModeled team sanction fees and possible State Tournament remittance layers.

Regional StructureUSSSA Midwest or other regional allocation where supported by evidence.

USSSA NationalModeled event sanction fees and other national revenue categories requiring documentation.

Corrected sanction-fee model: $1,645,900 in modeled Oklahoma team sanction fees + $400,125 in modeled national event sanction fees = $2,046,025 in corrected modeled total sanction fees.

State Tournament Research

The next “onion layer”: who actually receives State Tournament entry fees?

The current public event record may display an independent tournament director even when State Tournament fee allocation involves the Oklahoma State USSSA Office or additional organizational levels.

What HVIOG can establish

The event, director displayed, teams entered, advertised fee and associated activity.

What requires additional records

The director-retained share, state-office remittance, regional share, national share, facility payment and other distributions.

Publication standard: until documentary allocation records are obtained, use “director-associated advertised team-entry-fee activity,” not “director income.”

Validation Across BaseballHeaven.net

One dataset, many analytical views

HVIOG provides a common relational foundation for the broader research library.

Facility Reports

Filtered views of facility and satellite-facility activity, paired with public ownership, lease and local records.

Director Profiles

Filtered views of event activity associated with the director displayed in public USSSA records.

Municipality & County Studies

Geographic aggregation showing where activity occurred and which facilities were used.

Umpire Research

Standardized assignment-demand and compensation models derived from documented minimum game structures.

Public-School Research

Activity overlays that can be combined with leases, utilities, invoices and public records.

Congressional Oversight

A statewide activity architecture capable of identifying records needed to test classification, reporting and organizational controls.

Economic Impact

Transparent standardized travel models that distinguish local league activity from tournament travel.

Future Money-Flow Analysis

Recipient-level documentation layered onto the existing event/division activity spine.

What the Research Does—and Does Not—Establish

A defensible boundary between activity evidence and transaction evidence

HVIOG establishes

Events, divisions, teams, advertised prices, directors displayed, facilities, geography, minimum game demand, source links and standardized comparative models.

HVIOG does not establish by itself

Who deposited every payment, who retained every dollar, how every official was paid, whether every payment was reported for tax purposes, or whether any person violated a law.

Research principle: let the dataset establish activity; let documents establish transactions; let transparent models estimate scale; and never allow an inference to be presented as a verified receipt.

Phase IV

Recommended next generation: organizational money-flow reconstruction

The 20,316-row dataset should remain the activity spine while a new transaction-allocation layer is added.

Recipient Legal Entity

Identify who actually receives documented payments.

Recipient Role

Director, state office, regional structure, national organization, facility or other party.

State Tournament Allocation

Separate displayed director activity from state-office and other remittances.

Sanction & Registration Fees

Document actual historical rates and recipients by season and event type.

Gate & Concession Recipient

Determine which entity controlled and retained ancillary event receipts.

Facility Payments

Lease, rental, field-use or revenue-sharing payments.

Reporting Evidence

Invoices, contracts, payment processors, 1099/W-2 evidence where applicable, bank/deposit records and audit documentation.

Confidence Classification

Label every allocation as verified, calculated, modeled, reported, alleged or unresolved.

Read the full doctoral executive summary

The comprehensive report documents the research evolution from the initial Buck Thomas Park feasibility question through the current 2001–2026 Hidden Valley Integrity of the Game architecture.

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