The Amateur Softball Association (ASA) on December 5 added the "FPC305 Catalyst" bat manufactured by the Hillerich & Bradsby Co., Inc. (Louisville Slugger) to its non-approved bat list. Because the NCAA has adopted the ASA bat standard, the bat no longer will be legal for play in NCAA regular-season games or NCAA championship contests.

Marty Archer, general manager of the Louisville Slugger Baseball/Softball division, said the manufacturer acknowledges full responsibility for the situation and urges people to visit www.slugger.com to learn more about efforts to deal with it.

To be legal for NCAA regular-season or championship use, bats must bear the ASA certification mark and not be listed on the non-approved bat list. Institutions with the non-approved bat in their inventory are advised to immediately discontinue use of the bat. Results and statistics from games before the announcement during which the bat was used shall stand.

Louisville Slugger ceased production of the FPC305 Catalyst earlier this fall, but bats are available in the marketplace and retailers may continue to sell their inventory. Coaches should be cautious when buying equipment.

The non-approved model is one of several with the Catalyst name. The particular model is easily identified by its optic yellow base color with grey screen writing. Other Catalyst models share the optic yellow or green base color but the blue or red screen color differentiates the legal models from the newly declared non-approved model.

To gain initial certification and be granted the right to use the ASA 2004 bat certification mark, bat manufacturers must send production samples to an independent ASA-approved testing lab. Once the sample bats pass the performance test at one of the independent labs, the manufacturer has the authority to apply the ASA certification mark indicating compliance with the standard. It is the responsibility of the bat manufacturer to ensure that every unit of each model produced passes the test at any point during the lifespan of the bat.

The ASA conducts random audit testing of various approved models throughout each calendar year to verify that the manufacturers' bat models comply with the current standard. It was through this auditing process that the FPC 305 Catalyst was discovered to have failed to comply. The ASA currently is not aware of any other bat model that fails to comply with the bat performance standard but will continue to audit bats on an ongoing basis to verify compliance. The Louisville Slugger FPC305 is the first bat since the 2004 standard was adopted to have been initially certified compliant and later found to exceed the standard during random audit testing. The bat was found to fractionally exceed the 98-mph exit speed.

Testing protocol

The current test protocol consists of an air cannon from which a certified ball is propelled at 110 mph to a bat vised in a frictionless swivel. Through the use of light traps, the rebound speed of the ball is measured immediately after bat-ball impact and calculations are then made to arrive at batted-ball speed. All bats that perform at 98 mph or lower in this laboratory test are then deemed certified by the ASA and the 2004 certification mark is added to the bat screen design.

The NCAA Softball Rules Committee is requesting $30,000 in Association-wide funding to support more audit testing throughout the year. The proposal was forwarded to the Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet in September and will be reviewed with other Association-wide budget requests in February.

"We need to focus on testing in the collegiate market," said Christi Wade, rules committee chair and head softball coach at Saint Leo University. "The ASA obviously has made a commitment to enforcing its standard. The committee wants to do even more compliance testing in the intercollegiate fastpitch game to make sure what is happening on the field is in line with what we have learned in the laboratory. It is critical to the future of our game."

The ASA completes audit testing throughout the year to ensure that bats on the field do not exceed the standard, but the ASA must cater to other segments of the softball market, too, including youth and slow-pitch leagues. While the rules committee currently does not have the budget to test any bats, $30,000 would allow for testing of more than 30 bats per year.