On July 13, Jennie Finch, former Olympic softball pitcher and face of the movement for the sport, posted an article on Vox titled, “When the Olympics cancelled softball, it erased years of progress for women.”
On Aug. 3, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved softball as an Olympic sport for the 2020 Games in Tokyo.
After the 2008 Games, softball was cancelled as an Olympic sport just as the sport itself should have been on the rise. With icons like Jennie Finch, Jessica Mendoza, Monica Abbott and Cat Osterman giving young girls a powerful face to softball, a growing interest picked up at all levels. I am a direct result of that Olympics team’s impact — I was learning softball in a town league, swinging a Jessica Mendoza bat, wearing a Jennie Finch glove, and hanging their posters on my closet doors. Although it had a long history certainly prior to that team and generation of players, fast-pitch softball became a more recognized, mainstream and even commercialized sport.
But as much as the icons of the 2008 USA team did for the sport, they still couldn’t save it from being cancelled from future Olympics. For something that seemed so on the rise, the cancellation was a major setback and injustice. Again, I grew up in the resulting softball generation — a young female, angry that my sport was given no credit, insistent that it took immense talent, and determined to see its comeback. I shared Jennie Finch’s frustration in her July 13 article, and I shared her joy on Aug. 3 when she posted, “SO fired UP!!!! SOFTBALL IS BACK in the OLYMPICS!!!!!,” on her Instagram.
That is not to say that there has been a shortage of softball since its Olympic cancellation. NCAA softball is televised frequently and growing in popularity, and plenty of tournament teams and professional leagues are still thriving. But taking away the Olympics took away a global pedestal for the woman’s sport. It made it harder to be recognized at large because you had to want to know about fast-pitch softball in order to find it out there. While so many young boys can turn on the TV and be inundated with male sports players to idolize, girls just don’t have the same powerful platform to aspire to in general. Removing it from the Olympics may have been a decision based off popularity and numbers and such, but it was a knock to female athletes in the sport regardless.
So all eyes are set on 2020 in Tokyo — and it’s not just softball that is back. Baseball was added in as softball’s male counterpart, as well as surfing, climbing, skateboarding and karate. It’s an exciting move for all the sports, but it’s a huge comeback for women’s softball. Hopefully this reemergence of global competition will only continue to increase the interest and enthusiasm for the sport that began with the powerhouse players of the four Olympic teams prior to the cancellation.
You can count on me and my generation to stay up and watch every USA Olympic softball game in 2020. We have to make up for the two Olympics we were cheated of.
