The NCAA News - News and Features

March 23, 1998

Opportunity Knocking

Women's softball experiencing a growth spurt -- both in the United States and around the world

BY VANESSA L. ABELL
STAFF WRITER

Women's softball participation numbers have exploded nationally since the sport's successful Olympic debut at the 1996 Summer Games.

Within the NCAA membership, softball sponsorship growth has been more steady, increasing across all three divisions since the first championships were held in 1982. Among Division I member institutions, 71 percent now sponsor softball. In Division II, sponsorship stands at 83 percent while in Division III, 80 percent of the institutions sponsor the game.

In 1984, 451 NCAA member institutions sponsored softball. Today, that number is 767.

One of the primary reasons behind this growth is the adaptation member schools and conferences are making to comply with Title IX. The addition of softball to many athletics programs is helping to maintain the balance of equal spending between men's and women's sports. Typically, a softball roster may carry 18 student-athletes, sometimes even more. Those numbers help to offset the heavy participation numbers found in football.

The Southeastern Conference, a historically strong football conference, added softball as a conference sport in 1996. The addition of softball came out of an approved gender-equity principles statement agreed upon by the SEC membership. The conference, as a whole, agreed to commit to the addition of two additional female sports above the sponsorship number of men's sports.

Although the schools were not limited to which female sports they could sponsor, 11 of the 12 member schools added softball. Of those 11 programs, only the University of South Carolina, Columbia, already had an established varsity softball team. The first SEC softball tournament was conducted last May.

Strong impact

The addition of the SEC to the NCAA softball world already has made a strong impact. Lacy Lee Baker, executive director of the National Fastpitch Coaches Association, noted that five of 11 SEC schools already are being mentioned in NFCA's poll.

"The schools all committed 100 percent," said SEC Associate Commissioner Patricia Wall. "They gave the teams full scholarships. They brought in quality coaches and built new facilities. With this behind them, the coaches were able to go out and recruit strong players."

Cindy Cohen, chair of the Division I Women's Softball Committee and head coach at Princeton University, agrees that the SEC and other conferences are making a difference in participation numbers.

"The conferences made more of a commitment with the play-ins (10 Division I conferences currently receive automatic qualification and 12 conferences compete for six play-in berths in the championship bracket) and gender equity," Cohen said. "Conferences are now paying attention to the sport a bit more; they report information because of the RPI (ratings percentage index, an additional tool used in the evaluation of at-large teams). To downplay gender equity as a role in all of this would be naive."

In Division II, the championship bracket has been expanded for the 1998 season, increasing to 32 from 24. Even so, the Division II Women's Softball Committee already is considering the impact of a predicted increase in participation.

"Because of the influx of teams in the Texas area, a few years down the road, realigning of regions may be considered," said Mary Yori of the University of Nebraska, Omaha, chair of the Division II Women's Softball Committee. "It came up in the committee meeting last year. (The committee) may have to make adjustments to create parity among the regions with the anticipated growth."

Widespread growth

Nationwide, softball is experiencing phenomenal growth, providing many more opportunities for females to compete than were available 15 years ago.

Cohen said the growth is exciting.

"When I was a kid, there wasn't the opportunity for young ladies to grow up and play at the national level," she said. "Now, opportunities for national play are available to every 10-year-old. As a young female athlete, you were called a tomboy when you played with the boys. Our kids don't know what that word means."

With the beginning of a new women's professional league and the recent acceptance of softball as an Olympic sport, there is a promising future for today's young players.

"The youth program is the fastest-growing division of play," said Ronald A. Babb of the Amateur Softball Association. "The youth program has existed for 24 years. Some years have had phenomenal growth. In 1974, there were 6,000 teams, in 1997, 80,000 teams."

Babb was involved with an ASA poll of Division I softball schools last year and found 80 percent of the softball student-athletes had been recruited from ASA summer programs.

"It is an exciting time," Babb said. "It is fun to be a part of the sport right now. The addition of softball programs at the collegiate level has been very strong for a number of years. Softball is the fastest-growing sport at the high-school level. The natural progression of top players is into the top collegiate programs, from there to the national team and Olympic team programs."

Olympic success

Softball was added as a medal sport to the Olympics in 1996. The United States won the gold and did so with four NCAA student-athletes.

But the road to gold was a long journey for those in the softball community.

It took about 30 years of serious lobbying to get softball into the Olympics. The largest obstacle to softball's participation in the Olympics was that the sport at that time was not perceived as an international sport. To solve that problem, the game was exported.

"The next two decades were spent taking the sport around the world," Babb said. "Equipment, players, coaches and umpires were introduced by traveling around the world. Of the five countries asking for Olympic inclusion in 1965, 102 countries played in 1996.

"Today, 60 million people play worldwide. Sixty percent are women."