Women’s softball climbing to the top

– Posted on May 16, 2019Posted in: New and Noteworthy, Sports

Editorial

Kenzie Kallio

Sports Editorsoftball

Women’s softball is not the same sport it was twenty years ago. If you ask anyone who has played, coached or watched the sport for the last two decades, they will tell you the same thing. Women’s softball has grown into a widely popular sport and continues to flourish as time goes on.

Not only has the sport itself changed from a white to yellow ball, length from the pitcher’s mound to home plate or the distance of the outfield fence, the growing popularity of the sport viewed on television and game attendance is astounding. According to USA Today, in 2015, Game 1 of the Women’s College World Series (WCWS) recorded over 1.5 million viewers, the highest ratings for a college softball game in eight years.

In 2017, 1.6 million people watched the seventeen-inning game of the WCWS, according to an article by Sports Media Watch. This was up 43% in ratings.

The head coach for the University of Arizona softball team, Mike Candrea, spoke with Jason Bartel for Arizona Desert Swarm on how softball has changed over the years.

“At the beginning of my career when we had a white ball with high seams and 40 foot distance, the hitters had no chance,” Candrea said. “So if you had a one-run lead, it was pretty safe. But the way the game’s changed now, it’s become an offensive game. Basically we’ve done the opposite of what baseball’s done. Baseball’s toned their offense down to the point where there’s hardly any offense. But here, it’s a culmination of a lot of things.”

Softball has been growing over the years and will continue to grow as time goes on. Women have made strides in the softball community to make the sport more widely known. In 2008, softball was removed from the summer Olympics and had not returned since. In early 2018, Olympics.org released a statement indicating softball will return to the 2020 summer Olympics held in Tokyo.

With the rate softball has grown in the last twenty years, I believe the sport will grow to become the most popular women’s sport throughout the United States in the next twenty years.