With 288 softball teams playing all over KC, here’s how Top Gun Invitational was formed
During a Tuesday night snowstorm in 2010, Robb Behymer couldn’t wrap his head around what was happening at his father Bill’s funeral.
Held in Hannibal, Missouri, the service’s visitation line extended out the door and down the street. Robb Behymer didn’t recognize all of the 300-plus people he and his siblings were shaking hands with — a large enough group that the visitation line had to be stopped for the ceremony before resuming afterward.
Suddenly, it dawned on him. It was all of the athletes his father coached for 40 years.
Thirteen years later, Behymer’s drive to honor his father, who dedicated his life to youth sports, helped him create a premiere summer tournament in travel softball — the Top Gun Invitational.
“We are able to check, mostly every year, all the boxes,” said Behymer, the Top Gun Invitational founder and co-owner of Top Gun Events. “I tell all these coaches ... ‘If you’re stranded somewhere, I don’t care if it’s three in the morning, call me I’ll come get you.’ Because they need to know that they have an advocate in Kansas City.”
A Kansas City-area staple, the June 14-18 invitational has gradually expanded to the national landscape. Across its six divisions ranging from 12u to 18u, 288 teams are taking the field this weekend. That includes 13 Gatorade Players of the Year, which recognizes the top high-school student athlete in their respective state, and the National Gatorade Player of the Year in Florida commit Keagan Rothrock.
On top of that, four $1,000 scholarships are awarded each year to four graduating seniors.
However, even with 31 states, a squad from New Zealand and 200-plus college coaches in attendance this year, Behymer said his job wasn’t always just shaking hands and kissing babies. Top Gun Events Director of Operations Kayleigh Behymer, Rob’s daughter, saw it firsthand.
“He would go, you know, to his daytime job, come home and then he’d be on the phone with people and everything, coaches all that, for Top Gun until about 10 p.m.,” Kayleigh said. “Just seeing that grind of the work that he put into it to help build it and grow it to where it is now has been widely inspirational to me.”
Behymer’s late-night setup — consisting of a small lap tray holding his laptop — was a clear memory for Kayleigh. She said he was on the phone with coaches all the time persuading them to sign up.
Kayleigh, who pitched for four years at Avila University and was a graduate assistant at Baker from 2020-21, competed in the first-ever tournament, which she said held only 48 teams — eight in each division. At the time, it was called the Sonic Invitational and lasted one day due to rain. The next year, she said it transitioned into its current name, then a few years later expanded into Top Gun Events and has continued to grow.
Robb Behymer, an Army veteran, said the invitational’s name derived from his time in the military as a helicopter crew chief in the 101st Airborne — and love for the Top Gun movie.
“When I started this tournament, I was like, you know, I’ve got to have something that distinguishes it,” Behymer said. “(It was named) Top Gun because that’s where all the top fighter pilots go (and) ... now where all the top softball players go.”
There were also logistics to work out, including the many fields needed for the 288 teams slated to appear. Luckily, Behymer said, Kansas City is the perfect place for the event.
The invitational uses 43 fields in Shawnee, Overland Park, Belton and North Kansas City, including 10 turf fields at the Mid-America Sports Complex — the tournament’s central location.
An aspect not many other tournaments are able to pull off, it’s an attraction to travel softball teams and college coaches because it takes away distance concerns and has fields in close proximity to one another.
“If you put a five-hour driving radius around Des Moines, Iowa ... Kansas City, Missouri ... Oklahoma City, in those three driving (radii) there’s 134 colleges,” Behymer said. “The five hours’ significance is most female athletes will travel up to five hours away from home to school.”
Although not in the five-hour radius, Virginia Tech assistant coach Mike Lewis is one of the many college coaches that are in attendance. Lewis, who was an assistant coach at UMKC (now Kansas City) years ago, expressed how his relationship with Behymer led to him first checking out the tournament and continuing to come back.
Attending his fifth Top Gun event, Lewis noted the amount of work he can get done at the event and how it keeps getting better.
“I can park ... and I won’t have to get in my car for maybe the whole day depending on (my) goals,” Lewis said. “Just the complexes and the amount of teams and the quality of teams, like, it’s an easy one to come back for.”
Lewis is one of the many connections Behymer has made over the years, ranging from players and teams to coaches and staff members — exemplifying the long-lasting impact of the tournament. Additionally, the invitational brings in $5.3 million in direct sales, according to an event release, and even more in indirect sales, per a Top Gun Events official.
Behymer emphasized how supportive his staff and family, especially his wife Susan, have been. From the get-go, he strove to build the tournament off relationships where everybody is “a big family and anybody here is welcome.”
And with the tournament once again on Father’s Day weekend, he said the sight of softball (and a chocolate-filled donut gifted to him by his family each year) never gets tiring.
“(People) are taking time away from their families to come to this tournament, and what an honor that is,” Behymer said. “I don’t care who you are, what you do: You come in here and you’re about softball, and you’re watching the kids? Let’s go.”
