T-L Photo/SHELLEY HANSON THE BETTY Zane Days basketball tournament will not be held inside the City Park courts, shown here in Martins Ferry, because the beer garden wagon will be situated there.

MARTINS FERRY — A basketball tournament originally slated to take place during the Betty Zane Days festival will not be able to occur this year due to a mistake regarding the festival’s beer garden placement, said Martins Ferry Volunteer Fire Chief Mike Cooper.

Cooper said for the past several years the festival has annually submitted its state alcohol permit application to have the beer garden inside the basketball court at City Park. This same application was once again submitted to state alcohol control officials; however, Cooper and other organizers of the event forgot they needed to move the garden outside the court this year to accommodate the tournament.

After realizing their mistake, they contacted state officials to see if they could quickly get permission to relocate their beer stand before the festival’s start on Aug. 1. They were told, however, that it would still take another 30 days to get a new permit approved, even though they were just going to move it 10 feet outside the fence.

Cooper said he wanted to apologize publicly for the mistake.

“It was a screw up on our part due to the mapping we used. Now it’s too late to resubmit so they could have their tournament,” Cooper said.

Cooper noted part of the oversight was due to the tournament not being a regular part of the festival for the past few years.

“I want to make it clear that it’s the fire department’s fault, and we apologize to the players who wanted to play. Hopefully we can get it taken care of next year,” he said.

He noted the VFD could get into serious trouble if it tried to move the beer wagon to another location without permission from the state. He noted the vehicle takes up a lot of space inside the court, and it would not be safe for people to try and play basketball games inside while it is there.

“It’s not like we didn’t try to fix it, we just can’t fix it,” he added. “We were complacent — we sent in the same mapping. It was my fault as my first year as chief. … No one did anything wrong except us.”