The 2028 Summer Olympics will be hosted by Los Angeles.
Softball is in Oklahoma.
1327 miles away from every other Olympic sport.
Team USA Softball consistently headlines and earns medals, yet the entire theme of the Olympics is transitioning from impressive athletic performance to whether an event is ‘memeable’ or not.
Throughout Paris 2024, viewers witnessed a score of zero in breakdancing, a pistol shooter who competed with zero additional equipment, and the 120th year that racewalking—yes, competitive speed walking—made the roster.
Among events viewers debate being “real sports” or not, long established team sports, like softball, are being forgotten about.
Softball awaited its debut in the Olympics for precisely a century, finally appearing for the first time in 1996. Over the next twelve years, softball found a home in the Olympics, featuring some of the greatest players of all time: Jennie Finch, Jen Schroeder, and Natasha Watley.
Due to a so-called lack of popularity, softball has continuously been excluded from the Olympics. In fact, the fast pace of softball games mirrors its popularity in recent years: a very upward trend. Furthermore, this fascination is not exclusively the United States; the World Baseball Softball Confederation estimates that 65 million people worldwide play softball, and that number is on the rise.
Home to the softball powerhouse Oklahoma University, Athletes Unlimited Pro Softball, and the Women’s College World Series, Oklahoma City is no stranger to softball. The area is also currently considered the softball capital of the world.
Hosting Olympic softball games in a city where softball is already well-established, will not help the sport grow, as the International Olympic Committee claims it will. Instead, it will keep softball in a bubble, to where Oklahoma is really the only area softball is played.
Oklahoma University Softball alum Nicole Mendes asserted, “when there’s only one women’s stadium able to hold enough athletes in the country, wouldn’t you think the Olympics would be a perfect opportunity to make one?”
Softball can be played anywhere, not limited to the ocean, like surfing, offering plenty of options for the 2028 games. Likewise, California is a massive state for softball. Most notably, LA is home to the UCLA Bruins, who have won 12 NCAA championships and 13 Women’s College World Series in the history of the program.
In a world where the internet and streaming services dominate the television industry, stadium attendance is becoming less and less significant, as no matter what, the event would gain tons of viewership.
The easy way out of including softball in the Olympics would be to use UCLA’s stadium as is. Or, depending on the funds LA and UCLA would be willing to contribute, renovating the stadium to hold a higher capacity is another option, as its last renovation was in 2005.
Baseball is being hosted by Dodgers Stadium. There’s another Major League stadium, Angels Stadium conveniently a few miles away. Like the Celebrity All Star Game, portable fencing can be set up for a makeshift softball field.
One claim is that softball is meant to be spectated up close, and a baseball stadium brings the fans too far away from the action. However, softball was held at a baseball stadium in the Atlanta Olympics, so this seems like a brand new excuse to place softball in an already established area.
Former OU phenom Jocelyn Alo, currently competing professionally in Oklahoma and with the Savannah Bananas is “grateful that it’s even going to be a competing sport,” but feels softball Olympians will still “miss out on the whole Olympic experience.”
Softball players will get to compete in 2028, but it is not really the Olympics without the ceremonies and sense of community. It’s just another set of games.
Why should these women have to settle for less than the other athletes?
