Messenger photo by Britt Kudla: Tory Bennett of Fort Dodge makes a play at Rogers Park during the regular season.

All roads from an eight-week journey of accomplishments, adversity and everything in between have led to Rogers Sports Complex and Fort Dodge, as the 2022 state softball tournament gets under way on Monday.

Fort Dodge, the Class 5A champion in 2021, serves as an active tourney host for a fifth consecutive season and seventh time in the last eight years. The Dodgers are again the top-ranked and top-seeded squad in the large class, and will attempt to become 5A’s first-ever three-peat finalist.

Head coach Andi Adams’s squad is 172-29 overall since 2018, and has been seeded No. 1 or 2 in 5A for four straight summers. FDSH senior University of Iowa recruit and Gatorade Player of the Year Jalen Adams will throw the tournament’s first pitch at 11 a.m. against Waukee.

From that point on, it’s a five-day, 50-game blitz to crown five titleists.

Forty teams are in town this week, which means well over 500 players and somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 spectators will cross our city limits. Area squads Newell-Fonda and North Union are back; the defending state champion Mustangs — coached by 2008 FDSH graduate and former Dodger player Courtney Darrow — have made Fort Dodge their home away from home, qualifying 14 times in the last 18 seasons. Last July, they ended a 13-year drought by taking 1A gold.

FDSH and Newell-Fonda aren’t the only gold medalists trying to repeat the feat. Davenport Assumption (3A) and North Linn (2A) return; the Knights have reached Rogers Park seven straight times, while the Lions are on a four-year tourney streak.

Central Springs has the longest active qualifying streak at eight seasons. Williamsburg (five), Lisbon (five) and Waukee (four) are also recent mainstays. Traditional powers like West Des Moines Valley, Muscatine, Pleasant Valley, Carlisle, Iowa City Regina, Winterset, Dallas Center-Grimes, Indianola, North Scott, Norwalk, Martensdale St. Mary’s, Louisa-Muscatine, Mount Vernon know the path to FD by heart.

Davis County is the event’s lone rookie. Twin Cedars is in town for the first time since 1978. Dubuque Wahlert was 2-28 last summer; now they’re a 3A quarterfinalist.

The state’s top hitter — Jena Young of No. 1 Winterset, with a .628 batting average — and best pitchers — Adams and Saydel’s Dakota Lake, who is 29-4 with 394 strikeouts — will be active participants in a loaded field.

Our community will again put its best foot forward, not just with the workers and volunteers at the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union, Rogers Sports Complex and Iowa Central Community College — where 30 of the 40 schools are staying — but local restaurants, hotels and stores. This is Fort Dodge’s 53rd year of state softball — the longest active streak for a single championship event in Iowa — and after hosting 912,289 of you overall, we’re old hands by now at making you feel at home. If you need anything — answered questions, ideas, suggestions — please ask! We don’t take any of this for granted.

The same can be said about our role in the festivities. The Messenger’s award-winning sports crew will go wire-to-wire with you, providing stories, pictures, brackets, features and social media updates. We also have a page on our website dedicated to coverage — under the “State Softball” tab at www.messengernews.net — and a 32-page tournament preview edition in Monday’s paper. Chris Johnson, Dana Becker, Britt Kudla and I will be in the trenches from start to finish.

Now let the games begin!

Eric Pratt is Sports Editor at The Messenger. Contact him via email at sports@messengernews.net, or on Twitter @ByEricPratt