Mars Turf Wars kickball tournament returns to Maryland for July 4 weekend

Mars Turf Wars brought nearly 60 registered teams and more than 950 athletes and attendees to Howard County for its July 5-6 stop at Troy Park, with ESPN3 carrying the action. The tournament’s return marked the second straight year it landed in Maryland, after its first state stop in Prince George’s County in 2024, and gave Howard County another shot at turning a holiday-weekend draw into a repeat destination.

Tournament director Arion Herbert said Mars Turf Wars is built as a traveling, two-day competition. Saturdays are reserved for coed teams at the advanced and intermediate levels, while Sundays are set aside for women’s-only and men’s-only brackets, a format that widens the field without flattening the competition. That split gives elite coed squads a separate title path and lets gender-specific teams chase their own championship run on the same weekend.

The size of the Maryland stop backed up the pitch. FOX 5 DC’s coverage of a Maryland Turf Wars event at Liberty Sports Park in Upper Marlboro described nearly 60 registered teams and more than 950 athletes and attendees from across the country, a scale that fits a tournament branding itself as the top adult kickball brand in the nation. MARS says on its Playeasy profile that it has been committed to offering events since 2016, and the Turf Wars site traces the brand’s start to 2013, when one of the founders was introduced to adult kickball. From that beginning, the operation says it grew from backyard to national stage.

Howard County also fits the sports-tourism angle. Maryland Sports Commission project administrator Graham Whaples joined the commission in June 2019 and was elevated in 2022, part of the local infrastructure that benefits when a national event comes back for a second straight year. Graham Whales of the Maryland Sports Commission called the tournament “the best of the best, as close to professional as you're gonna get the best players in the United States.” He also said he saw it as a family-friendly event where fans could watch world-class kickball in person, a rare combination of atmosphere and legitimacy that helps adult kickball keep expanding beyond its rec-league roots.