Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 20, 1994 TAG: 9405200011
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was chilly. It was windy. Rowan College was in town. It wasn't the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl, it just felt like it.
It was still colorful, too. Let's start with the softball that the final six among the 260 NCAA Division III women's teams are batting around at the Moyer Sports Complex through Sunday.
It's very hard and very lively. The only thing that will restrict its flight is top-flight pitching. It has red stitches, raised to help pitchers add some dip to their zip. It's made in China.
It's optic yellow. All the better to see you with, my dear. When Division III softball committee chair Sheilah Lingenfelter, the Wittenberg (Ohio) coach, first saw the ball after years of playing with a white sphere, she thought it was pretty fruity.
NCAA softball, played by 618 women's teams across three divisions, really is the Grapefruit League - and the game is better for it.
In the 13 years the NCAA has sanctioned softball, the rulesmakers have tried to help the hitters. The rubber has been moved back to 43 feet from the plate - yes, back (italics) 3 feet. Pitchers must begin their delivery with both feet on the slab.
The ball is the latest change to put runs into a very aggressive game that involves more bunting and stealing than you'd expect. The fences are 190 feet from the plate down the lines and 220 to center.
The speed of the game also makes it enjoyable. Most seven-inning games don't last much longer than 75 minutes. There's also an eight-run, five-inning slaughter rule.
It's still a pitcher's game, although not too much so. Some earned-run averages still are figured under a microscope. Umpires call a pitcher's strike zone. Deep counts are few. College baseball should be this good these days.
Salem's first NCAA softball tournament basically brings a foreign sport to the Roanoke Valley. The tourism head-counters ought to be thrilled with a tournament bracket filled in Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
The game has enjoyed tremendous growth with little girls who are T-ball graduates, and that interest is just now reaching many campuses.
For instance, more than 300 schools play Division I men's and women's basketball. Only 186 Division I schools play softball. Of Virginia's 10 Division I schools with women's programs - VMI is fighting females - only UVa, Radford and George Mason play softball.
Virginia Tech announced this week it will add women's softball to its program two springs from now. Some advice to Hokies athletic director Dave Braine: Before you hire a coach, before you build a diamond, start recruiting the best high school junior pitchers you can find.
The Old Dominion Athletic Conference sponsored the City of Salem's bid for this tournament. The ODAC has 12 women's programs, but only four played softball this season, with Emory & Henry adding the sport in 1995. Only nine state Division III programs play the sport, including Ferrum.
No Virginia teams play the game as well as it will be played at the superb Moyer Complex this weekend. The state is 0-8 in NCAA regional play and has never placed a team in this six-team, double-elimination version of the World Series.
The strength in Division III softball is in the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference and the New Jersey Athletic Conference. Those leagues produced two-thirds of this year's field - Buena Vista and Central of Iowa and Rowan and Trenton State - and six of the last seven and eight of 12 titlists in the short NCAA history.
These schools are neighborly national rivals, like Duke and North Carolina are in men's hoops. The powers of Division I, with athletic grants to offer - play a faster, stronger game with bigger athletes, Lingenfelter said.
Those who know the game say the difference between competition in Divisions II and III is slight. A Division III team beating a Division I team perhaps happens more in softball than in any NCAA sport.
For the reasonable per-session admission price of $5 for adults and $2.50 for high-school youths and younger, you'll hear more team chanting than anywhere on the senior side of Little League.
You'll see why four radio stations are doing play-by-play back to their team's hometowns. You'll see reserves run laps at the end of innings and finish with handslaps with teammates running off the field.
You'll see infield quartets finish a groundout with in-unison routines and rituals that are remindful of Motown music. Some teams take batting practice. Others take choir practice.
"In many ways, it's a unique game," Lingenfelter said.
One thing is obvious. These teams are playing hardball.
by CNB