Kickball coming to Crittenden County

Kickball coming to Crittenden County

Adults who are looking for a flashback to days at recess, kicking a red rubber ball around a field with friends, can now look for-ward to the first ever West Memphis Kickball League

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After decades of providing people in Crittenden County an outlet from adulting on the softball diamond, the West Memphis Softball League is expanding and brining to the community its first ever kickball league.

The West Memphis Kickball League starts its inaugural season on July 24th and events director Jay Holder hopes it will provide adults in Crittenden County a fun and athletic distraction from everyday life for people who want to participate in community athletics but aren’t interested in playing softball.

“We always play softball, but we do have a lot of people who don’t like softball,” Holder said. “So, they want to play kickball.

And, it’s fun. You get to be a kid… It looks like it’s going to be fun. We’ll see how it does in its first year.”

Six co-ed teams are currently signed up for the first ever West Memphis Kickball League, though Holder is still accepting team applications. All teams will be co-ed and will have between nine and 20 players, with no more than 14 players in a kicking lineup. All games will be six innings or 50 minutes in length, whichever comes first. There will be no ties in West Memphis Kickball. If a game exceeds the inning or time length, an extra inning will begin with the last two kickers from the previous inning starting on first and second base and, if a second extra inning is required, the last three kickers from the previous inning will begin on first, second and third base, respectively. If all else fails and a tie listed on a scorecard turned into Holder, a coin-flip will determine the winner.

There are many other rules and the league certainly is competitive in nature. However, the main purpose of bringing kickball to West Memphis is allowing adults to get back in touch with their inner child, according to Holder.

“It gets a lot of the adults out that still want to play sports and gives them an opportunity to play,” Holder said. “This is more about the adults getting to be a kid, getting away from work and stress and getting to have some fun.”

Though, while the kickball league is new to Crittenden County, the West Memphis Softball League has been bringing together the local community for decades now and operates as one big family, according to longtime member and coach Dustin Allen.

“The softball community is a family within itself,” Allen said. “We all play ball. We’ve all known each other for years. We’ve got three traveling tournament teams that come out of this league itself and travel 300-400 miles to play competitive ball… We’re all a family. We travel and our kids all play together.

The softball community really is a family within a family.”

With the West Memphis Softball League slated to begin their season on July 24th as well, five men’s softball teams and three co-ed softball teams are already signed up with that number subject to grow as people turn in team applications.

A co-ed team is defined as a team that has at least three female players, with at least one of those female players require to start in the infield. All softball teams will adhere to United States Specialty Sports Association (USSSA) rules.

All games will take place at West Memphis’ Marion Rose Complex softball fields with men’s softball playing on Tuesday, kickball taking the field on Wednesday’s and co-ed softball playing on Thursday’s. Games will begin at 6:30 p.m. those days. Holder says that each respective season will last a minimum of six weeks, taking the leagues into the middle of September, at least.

Softball players, men’s and co-ed leagues alike, are responsible for providing their own softball equipment, but Holder does provide all kickball equipment. Teams are allowed to add players until August 8th, but team’s must have their team applications submitted to Holder by July 21st.

Team registration fees are 350 dollars.

For more information about the adult athletic leagues of Crittenden County, add Jay Holder on Facebook or ask to join the Facebook group West Memphis Adult Sports Leagues “Softball/Wiffleball/Flag Football”.

By Collins Peeples