For a team that just lost a game 15-0, the members of the Kickball All-Stars
are surprisingly upbeat.
They’ve just gotten their butts handed to them by the Tulips and Blue Balls
team in Kickball League of Rochester play, but for some reason the All-Stars
aren’t having much of a problem shrugging off the loss at Genesee Valley Park.
“This was a practice,” says team captain Beth Coia with a guffaw
as her teammates gather at the picnic table that serves as a dugout for the
game.
As her teammates break into a case of Coors Light and slip on sweatshirts on
the unusually chilly and overcast June evening, Coia sips on a bottle of Corona
and explains why it’s so easy to bounce back from such a loss. While it might
be just a hackneyed cliché in other athletic pursuits, in the Kickball League
of Rochester, the competition is
almost secondary. What matters, Coia says, is the merriment factor.
“We do this because it’s fun,” she says. “We like just
hanging out and playing for the love of kickball.”
Across the diamond, similar sentiments are shared by members of the
victorious Tulips and Blue Balls squad. With a bottle of Guinness in her hand,
Heather Yurka sports a wide grin and espouses the allure of kickball.
“You don’t need athletic talent to play, you meet a lot of new people,
and you get to drink a lot of alcohol on a Tuesday night,” she says.
Most of the Tulips and Blue Balls roster works together at StrongMemorialHospital,
where they absorb their fair share of stress. Playing in KLOR, they say, gives
them an outlet to release a lot of that pressure.
“We all work a lot,” says team member Jodie Howell, who supplied a
case of Bud Light for the evening’s festivities, “so this gives a chance
to get out and do something else.”
They certainly aren’t the only ones who feel that way. After launching in
fall 2007 with just four teams, KLOR’s summer league now includes a whopping 88
teams and roughly 1700 players. Thanks largely to Facebook and word of mouth,
kickball – a sport for decades associated with children – is now huge with 20-
and 30somethings in Rochester.
“We knew we were on to something big,” says league commissioner
Ryan Kimball, “but we’ve been blown away by this.”
The game of kickball most likely had its origins in the 1940’s among U.S.
soldiers who played it during their down time from the war. From there,
kickball developed into a popular pursuit during gym classes and school
recesses across the country.
The game utilizes many of the basic tenets of baseball – a four-base
diamond, a scoring system based on runs and outs, and a pitcher starting the
action – but substitutes a big, rubber ball that’s kicked in place of a
baseball that’s hit.
While rooted in the gymnasiums and playgrounds of America, in recent decades
kickball has blossomed as an adult sport, one that allows grown-ups to revisit
one of their childhood loves while having a blast with likeminded people.
The pastime had matured so much that by the late 1990’s, adult kickball
fanatics saw an opportunity to unite impassioned players not only across the
country, but all over the world. The result was the World Adult Kickball
Association, founded in 1998 in Washington, D.C. Much like the Rochester
organization, WAKA’s mission is simple.
“Kickball brings people another opportunity to relive their youth by
playing a sport they haven’t played in years ,in an environment that fosters
competition and love of the sport,” says Josh Bob, manager of WAKA’s North
East Region. “Kickball is becoming a new pastime. We feel very strongly
that people enjoy WAKA kickball not only for the athletic aspect, but for the
social aspect as well.”
Locally, the seeds of the Kickball League of Rochester (which isn’t
affiliated with WAKA; more on that later) were sown in 2007, when Kimball
struck up an idea to start a kickball club based at J.D. Oxfords bar and
restaurant on Monroe Avenue. As he was drumming up interest, another Oxfords
regular, Dave Hofstetter, playfully mocked the whole idea of a kickball league.
“I was like, ‘What, are you kidding?'” Hofstetter says now.
But Kimball persisted, launching KLOR in fall 2007 with just four teams.
Eventually, Hofstetter became a convert to the crusade; frustrated by the often
stifling hyper-competitiveness of many local softball leagues, he saw kickball
as a less stringent and more entertaining pursuit.
Hofstetter became so impassioned about kickball that he eventually became
KLOR’s president. Without spending a dime on advertising, the two developed a
website and soon created a Facebook group, both of which spread the word about
the league and helped draw in hundreds of new participants.
By summer 2008, KLOR had cultivated 17 teams, a number that grew to 44 this
past spring. Drawing financial support from sponsors in the local business
community, the league now boasts 88 teams in the current summer season, with
squads divided into several brackets that play at Genesee Valley Park on
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday nights. (Kimball and Hofstetter say
demand is so great that the league could also play on Wednesdays, but softball
leagues reserve the park’s fields on that night.)
In fact, such logistical considerations are the only things preventing the
league from getting even bigger. “I hate to do it, but we’ve started
turning away teams,” Kimball says. “There just isn’t enough room.”
For Kimball and Hofstetter, KLOR is truly a labor of love. Both estimate
that they spend 40 hours a week managing and administrating the league on top
of their regular jobs (Hofstetter is the director of human resources for Bill
Grays Inc., while Kimball is director of customer relations with Simco Capital
LTD.) In fact, Hofstetter notes on one Sunday in May, he began drawing up the
summer league’s schedule at 8 a.m. and didn’t finish until 4 a.m. the next day.
Adds Kimball: “I don’t see my house for days or even weeks.” That
doesn’t mean they’ve stopped playing: Kimball plays on four different KLOR
teams, while Hofstetter is on the roster of three squads.
But, they both add, too many potential members is a good problem to have.
For them, the exponential growth of the league means they’ve struck a chord
with young adults in the area. There’s no residency requirement or limits on
team size, and players must simply be 21 or older to take part.
The league’s leaders say that KLOR’s freewheeling nature has also been a
huge draw for many players. While all participants are urged to drink
responsibly, beer is a key part of each night’s festivities. Instead of a coin
toss to decide who kicks first, teams send representatives to home plate for a
beer shotgun competition before the game, and players frequently take cans of
suds with them when they take the field for defense.
But for Kimball and Hofstetter, kickball’s draw goes beyond all that. The
rules of the sport are also extremely simple, and a season of league games
allows participants to cultivate new friendships and social networks. The
league also features pub crawls and theme nights, such as on Halloween, when
water balloon wars are known to break out. And teams are encouraged to be,
shall we say, creative when naming themselves; summer team monikers include
Puttin’ Pitches in Their Place, My Kick Is Bigger Than Yours, Menace to
Sobriety, and Kitty Punchers.
However, the biggest plus, the organizers say, is the total lack of athletic
and competitive pressure, a situation that encourages even the most clutzy or
out-of-shape player to, ahem, get a kick out of the game.
“When you make an error in kickball, it’s funny, not a screw-up,”
Kimball says. “It’s funny when people fall down in kickball.”
Athletically speaking, he adds, there’s only one requirement. “If you
can kick a ball, you get to play,” Kimball says. “You don’t have to
be good at it.”
Adds Hofstetter: “And you’re not chastised if you’re not good.”
In fact, perhaps the only real competition on the local kickball scene might
come from between different leagues, not players on opposing teams. WAKA rep
Josh Bob says his organization is planning to start its own Rochester league to
rival KLOR.
WAKA brings with it a massive, mutually supportive, global kickball
community, with roughly 300 divisions, more than 3000 teams, and 75,000 players
around the world. Because the association also features standard rules of play
for all league competition – including official WAKA game balls, team size
requirements, organized playoffs, and even a world championship competition,
slated this year for October in Las Vegas – the new WAKA league should provide
an alternative to players who don’t like KLOR’s loosy-goosey approach to the
sport.
Bob says the presence of two leagues in the Rochester market will actually
be a good thing. “I don’t necessarily see that as a problem,” he
says. “There’s certainly something to be said for a little healthy
competition. We’re looking to provide a service to the citizens of Rochester,
who now will have two options to choose from.”
For their part, Kimball and Hofstetter say they declined to join WAKA
because of the organization’s more structured system of play, which they feel
is too stifling. KLOR uses different sizes of balls and its own league logos
and shirts instead of those required for WAKA members. Cost is also a factor –
in KLOR, teams pay $600 per season to play, while WAKA charges between $60-$70
per player, according to its website.
“It just doesn’t suit our culture,” Kimball says of WAKA’s
guidelines. “It’s a lot stricter, and the fees are higher.”
Kimball is confident that KLOR can beat back the WAKA challenge.
Logistically, he says, the city doesn’t have enough fields to support two
leagues, while KLOR has simply established a strong foothold among a very loyal
member base.
“We can’t stop [WAKA] from doing what they do,” he says, “but
I can’t see people leaving our league to join theirs.”
Such dedication was evident on that cool June night at Genesee Valley Park.
After the Kickball All-Stars and Tulips and Blue Balls filtered away from the
field, the teams from the night’s next contest begin to gather around the
diamond.
One of the squads, C U Next Tuesday (consider the acronym), has been with
KLOR from the beginning. “We’re the OG,” says team member Lesley
Havens. When asked why she plays, she says it’s simple. “Because it’s
awesome,” she says, a can of Labatt Blue in her hand.
Another teammate, burly and Belushi-esque Nick Tatar, ambles to the team’s
table after winning the opening beer shotgun challenge. Upon overhearing the
question and Havens’ subsequent answer, Tatar blurts out his own rationale, one
that pretty much sums up the appeal and spirit of adult kickball.
“Because,” he shouts with a huge grin, “we’re not picked
last!”
For more information on the Kickball League of Rochester
visit kickball-rochester.com. For
information on the World Adult Kickball Association check kickball.com.
This article appears in Jul 29-29, 2009.
