New club softball team plays first game today

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

The KU club softball team will play its inaugural game today against Haskell Indian Nations University.

The club was created last spring and was officially approved for play this fall.

Playing a Division I sport requires a substantial amount of time and energy. Katy Saunders didn’t have that kind of time.

“I just played intramural softball for two years,” said Saunders, a Tappahannock, Va., junior. “And that just wasn’t enough.”

It was after that realization that Saunders decided to look into playing club softball. But she ran into a problem. The university had no club softball team. However, Saunders had a solution to her setback: form a new team.

Although Saunders knew many others shared her situation, filling a new squad with new faces posed difficulties.

“Starting a new team wasn’t easy,” Saunders said. “I had to draft at least 10 different copies of the team constitution before it got approved.”

After Saunders got the green light, she was faced with the problem of completing a roster. She set up tables in the Ambler Student Recreation Fitness Center to help garner interest and found 50 people interested in club softball.

“Only 12 showed up to our first practice though,” Saunders said.

From those 12, Saunders formed her roster. Saunders said she tried to keep the commitment manageable for all those involved. The team practices three times a week for two hours in preparation for its games, which will take place during the course of a little more than a month.

Meanwhile, the school-sponsored softball team begins its fall season in late September, playing for two weekends in the Fall Invitational and the Hawkeye Classic, and playing the regular season from February until the middle of May.

The club softball team will travel down 23rd Street to face Haskell’s varsity softball team today. Other teams on the schedule include Ottawa University, Iowa Central, Crowder College and UMKC. The team will then travel to Manhattan to face Kansas State’s and Nebraska’s club teams in a mini-Big 12 tournament.

— — Edited by Scott Toland

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