Last month, the Washington Interscholastic Athletics Association quietly announced that slowpitch softball will become an officially sanctioned high school sport for girls, complete with leagues and uniforms and everything, beginning in the fall.
The announcement was made during the heart of high school fastpitch softball playoffs and so it was understandably overshadowed by the on field news of the day. However, the development has been on the mind of area coaches and athletic directors alike as they attempt to navigate a new field of competition.
The decision to institute slowpitch as an official high school sport was made by vote during a WIAA executive board meeting on April 22. That decision stipulated that the 2018-19 season will serve as the inaugural campaign with an official WIAA State Championship tournament tentatively slated to begin in the 2019-20 school year.
“Due to increasing interest in a fall sports season for slowpitch softball, the WIAA is pleased to announce that an official season will begin this fall,” said WIAA Executive Board President, Lori Wyborney, in a press release. “This is a great opportunity to reach more female athletes and increase the number of students who get the benefits of competitive athletics.”
While this fall will mark a new chapter for slowpitch softball, the book on the sport already has many chapters. Slowpitch was first adopted by the WIAA in 1978-79 and was the only version of softball played in Washington high schools until the first fastpitch championships were held in 1992. Once fastpitch arrived on the scene though, participation in high school slowpitch gradually fell off, with teams and leagues opting to offer either fastpitch or slowpitch, but not both. The final slowpitch state championship was held in 2002 and all WIAA classifications had transitioned exclusively to fastpitch by 2003.
In recent years though, the sport has found a new footing as an unofficial sport in several leagues across the state. In Southwest Washington the Greater Saint Helen’s League was the first to rekindle their slowpitch teams and participation has been even more pronounced in Eastern Washington, where the Greater Spokane League, and the Columbia Basin Big 9 have each fielded multiple times.
Slowpitch softball has been, and will continue to be, offered in the fall as opposed to the spring when fastpitch softball season reigns. Those offset seasons have led several area fastpitch coaches to ponder how a slowpitch program might impact their program. At W.F. West, fastpitch coach Caty Lieseke says she’s spoken briefly with Athletic Director Jeff Johnson about the prospect of adding slowpitch to the school’s athletic offerings but so far nothing has been decided.
For her part, Lieseke remains reserved in her projections for participation at a fastpitch crazy school like W.F. West.
“I think a lot of our girls are already playing volleyball and soccer and they see those as their opportunities to play something different,” said Lieseke, who also harbors some concern about possible negative effects to the mechanics of established fastpitch players.
“If they wanted to I’m not going to say they can’t or they shouldn’t, but the swing is totally different,” Lieseke added.
Still, Lieseke does see the potential for a slowpitch program to benefit the overall student athlete participation numbers, and for fastpitch in particular.
“It could be a huge benefit for our JV program. I think playing slowpitch for them could be a huge thing as far as learning the basics of playing catch, fielding ground balls and fielding fly balls,” explained Lieseke “We have some (fastpitch) girls this year who this was the first time they’d ever touched a ball in a game situation and I absolutely want them playing slowpitch… It grows your program even if it is a slightly different game.”
Lieseke compared slowpitch softball to bowling in so much as it is an “easier entry” sport and noted that a handful of students have already asked her about what a Bearcat slowpitch team might look like.
“Slowpitch can be a thing. Those are kids who are wanting to do stuff. They’re not the ones out for volleyball but they want to be outside and doing something.”
Out in Rochester, fastpitch coach Dave Montgomery says he hasn’t heard much scuttlebutt about the possibility of forming a new Warriors slowpitch team. However, he did note that Black Hills has expressed interest in starting up a slowpitch team in an attempt to bolster the number of prospective fastpitch players in the school. Montgomery says that because Rochester is one of the smallest 2A schools around, it may prove difficult to field a slowpitch team during the fall when volleyball, soccer and cross country are already vying for female athletes.
“I would say that it would be a little bit harder for us to try to do something like that here but if you do have a group of girls who don’t normally play a sport in the fall, maybe that’s a good place for them to go,” postulated Montgomery. “Maybe these kids who feel left out... Maybe they're not the fastest for soccer, or they’re not the tallest and they’re not going to be a middle blocker in volleyball, maybe this is a place for them.”
Even if there does prove to be interest in forming a slowpitch team from the general student population, Montgomery says he would be wary of sending any of his fastpitch players out to the diamond in the fall for fear of ruining their well-honed approach at the plate before fastpitch season.
“I got to be quite a slowpitch player but then when I went back to baseball, whoops, I’d ruined my swing,” explained Montgomery, who first picked up slowpitch while he was still in high school.
“I guess my struggle with it too is how competitive will it really be?” Montgomery added. “Are you going out there just for fun? The vast majority of slowpitch teams that I’ve played on have just been out there for fun.”
In Longview the R.A. Long Lumberjills were one of the first teams in the region to reform their slowpitch team. The fall of 2017 was the first reincarnation of the program and 15 players came out to participate, along with head fastpitch coach Jennifer Godinho, who worked in an assistant coaching capacity for the slowpitch team.
“We basically did it as a Title IX thing. We were low on female athletes and so, you know, slowpitch in P.E. is always a big hit. Kids seem to love it and can’t wait for the slow pitch section,” explained Godinho. “When we started it, it was to grow more numbers and get kids involved. It wasn’t necessarily those kids who are a die hard athlete and are going to go out and buy a $300 bat, but it's someone who wants to be active and develop a skill that they can use in their adult life.”
Of the 15 slowpitch players last year, one was already a full time varsity fastpitch player, two were part-time varsity and JV players, and two others were freshman already intent on joining the Lumberjills fastpitch program. Godhino said that beyond those experienced players, “It was ground zero for most of them.”
Godinho said that she didn’t change too much about her coaching approach in order to fit slowpitch but she did say that there was a more concerted focus on the fundamentals of softball.
“I know a lot of people worry, you know, ‘As a fastpitch coach I’m not going to let my players participate because it will ruin this, or ruin that.’ But in reality, you don’t hit all that much in slow pitch but you play a ton of defense,” Godinho noted. “It’s not like your beer league where people are putting all these wacky spins on the the ball. All they’re doing is soft tossing it into the plate...We basically correlated it to ‘It’s a change up. Just wait on it and instead of just trying to hit it as hard as you can, be strategic and place it.”
Last year, R.A. Long competed against other traditional GSHL teams, like Mark Morris and Columbia River, as well an assortment of other Vancouver area schools like Battleground, Camas, Skyview and Heritage. They even participated in a District Tournament with the same layout as fastpitch before advancing to a test-run State Tournament.
Godinho said that the season provided her fastpitch players who had been waiting to come into their own with an opportunity to expand their physical skill set as well their intangible qualities.
“Most of the kids that had played before came from my JV team and they definitely were a whole different player this spring. They upped their game. They had more confidence and they were better leaders,” reported Godinho, who has been the head fastpitch coach at R.A. Long since 2007.
“My first year in high school was the first year that they went to fastpitch so some of my teammates played slowpitch. I just think that fastpitch grew so much and it became so much about the ASA summer softball teams traveling all over the place, and you have two bats and everything costs hundreds and hundreds of dollars. It has grown so much that not everyone feels like it is something they can take part in,” explained Godinho. “Slowpitch used to be something where you just had a couple of team bats and a couple of team helmets and you just went out and competed.”
She says she sees slowpitch as the more equitable option for student athletes from all backgrounds and she’s convinced that the overall impact will be positive for fastpitch programs in the state.
“Your W.F. West team up there is top notch always, so that’s a little bit intimidating. We’re more the middle of the road team and one of the things that kids don’t come out for is, they’re like, ‘Oh, well, I don’t have my own bat or I don’t have a mit.’ So they are too embarrassed to ask for help and they say they’ll just come out next year,” noted Godinho. “I do think it will grow the program. It probably won’t be the kids that go straight to varsity but it should help build the JV…. I see a huge benefit to it.”
