The Warwick Police and Fire Departments hosted the first-ever Michael Lorenzen charity softball tournament at the fields at Warwick City Park on Saturday, raising funds for the Michael Lorenzen Foundation.

Michael Lorenzen was a 4-year-old boy from Coventry that was diagnosed with Autism at a young age. He and his father, Edward, passed away in a house fire in 2018, which led to the family establishing the foundation which raises scholarship money for college students with Autism.

The tournament featured 20 teams from local police and fire departments throughout the state, and was organized by Warwick police lieutenant Scott Robillard, who’s son is also Autistic.

“Everything went smoothly. We finished with 20 teams, we would have been happy with 16 teams, so to have 20 in the first year of the tournament’s inception is a great accomplishment. We were ecstatic,” said Robillard.

Robillard was happy to see so many people from the RI law enforcement and first responder community make the trip. The tournament hosted teams from Warwick, Cranston, Coventry, Providence, North Providence, Burrillville and a handful of others.

“It’s a great thing. Law enforcement, first responders, police officers, fire fighters, they seem to always bond together for any cause, especially when they are near and dear to someone in or close to those agencies,” said Robillard. “I figured that it would be easy to get all these guys together, at the end of the day, they’re all competitive too. It’s one big family and it was nice to see everyone come out and support it.”

Robillard hopes to bring the tournament back for another year, and to see it continue to grow into an annual tradition moving forward.

“There’s nothing quite like this in Rhode Island, where people in law enforcement and the fire departments get to compete against each other. I believe that if we continue to do it then it will grow,” said Robillard. “We would like to continue to do it. Obviously careers change (within law enforcement), but we have made the contacts, the seed has been planted, we’re striving for an annual thing. The feedback that we got was very positive so we’re hoping that it will continue to grow.”