By Nate West
News Editor
On Tuesday at 4:00 p.m., Rob DeFazio announced that kickball will be replacing softball as the sport for Spring Weekend 2013.
DeFazio, director of the Center for Activities, Recreation and Leadership, said there are several reasons for the change, the biggest being the safety of people playing and watching the softball games.
“Softball has been a tradition at St. Bonaventure for many years. Over the years we’ve contemplated whether to change it or not,” DeFazio said. “We’ve had many injuries, many close calls. We look at what’s best for our students, their safety, can we get more students involved. To provide a safe, fun environment for everybody – we think kickball can provide that.”
DeFazio has spoken with students, an intramural council, coaches, athletic trainers and other faculty who have been around the tournament in the past about switching to kickball. A change has been discussed about for the past few years, he added.
“I talked with some students who were on the winning team last year for softball; they said they’re game for kickball,” DeFazio said. “They’re just looking for a competitive, fun thing to do Spring Weekend. This is a complete recreation tournament. It would be one thing if this was a highly-competitive softball tournament for those that have played their whole life.”
Historically, the first 32 teams to register were allowed to play in an extra game, but that won’t be happening this year, DeFazio said. Also, the kickball games will be six innings rather than five as with softball, but if games run too long they will be dropped down to five. There is a cap limit of 80 teams.
DeFazio said an advantage of kickball is that it can be played in moderate rain, unlike softball. If the weather isn’t ideal, games can still be played.
There hasn’t been an increase in injuries from year to year, DeFazio said, but some years have been worse than others.
“We have some pretty bad bruises where balls get hit right back to the pitcher, 3td base or 1st base. I’ve seen somebody’s earlobe get sliced pitching,” he said. “We had somebody get square in the head, literally you could see their skull. Injuries are a part of any game. Kickball we could have injuries, but what you want to do is ‘What injuries can we avoid?’”
DeFazio is concerned also with spectators being injured, he said. He’s seen students lined up on the baselines be hit by balls, he said.
Kickball needs to be given a chance before any decision is made on a potential change back to softball, he said.
“There are students who are going to participate no matter what. There are students that are going to participate now because they never wanted to before,” DeFazio said. “I would expect there will be some students that, on principle alone, won’t participate because of the change. I don’t think it’s a snap decision that ‘Hey, the numbers went down, we need to go back to softball next year.”
DeFazio hopes that the change to kickball won’t be a big issue to students. He hopes that when students are together, it won’t make a difference whether it was kickball or softball.
Registration forms will be available in front of the Richter Center front desk tomorrow morning. Registration will take place at 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 17.
