Bound 4 Beijing

ASA Women’s Tour Gives Back To Players, Fans & Associations

By Ashley Wright

The 2008 Women’s National Softball Team is gearing up for a fourth gold-medal win with the 2008 “Bound 4 Beijing” Tour, sponsored by the Amateur Softball Association of America (ASA), the national governing body for softball. The team will compete in more than 40 cities starting Feb. 9 in preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

The 18-woman national team, which will travel to Beijing in August to defend its three gold medals, will make 42 stops (41 across the country and one in Australia) to compete against National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I opponents, regional All-Star teams and international opponents, playing more than 60 games in all, according to ASA Director of Marketing Kelly McKeown. Local associations connected to ASA, a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee, plan and organize when and who the national team plays at each stop. The ASA includes 84 local associations with more than 240,000 teams and more than 3 million members.

One stop will be in Bowie City, Md., to compete against the Washington Glory. Jack Mowatt, Maryland/DC ASA commissioner, said that planning the Women’s National Team’s game against the Washington Glory has involved getting the details, both large and small, planned out in advance. Mowatt said he started organizing for the event when he first heard about plans for the tour and was able to get the majority of the key elements for the game organized and confirmed within 30 days.

How was Mowatt so successful in such a short turn-around time? He started with securing the field on which the game would be played, he said, by approaching the city about one of its fields. He then decided to play an established team, as opposed to an All-Star team as in previous years, due to the depth of coordination and problems that arose from creating a team that wasn’t already established.

“There are so many things that factor into planning an event like this,” Mowatt said. One of his biggest worries was covering the rental costs of the facility, but 1,500 seats had been sold just two days after an October press conference announcing the game, he said. By mid-December, before the marketing campaign had even gotten off the ground, more than 3,000 seats had been sold merely by word of mouth and the press conference. 

For The Team & Fans

Mowatt believes women’s softball increased in popularity after becoming an Olympic sport in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

ASA Executive Director Ron Radigonda praised the efforts of local commissioners like Mowatt. “Our local associations have done a great job in planning to host these stops and providing the opportunity for our team to compete against the best teams in the country on American soil,” he said, adding that the ASA is also proud to be able to organize the “Bound 4 Beijing” Tour not only for the national team but also for softball enthusiasts across the United States.

Cat Osterman, pitcher for the national team who will be making her second tour, shared Radigonda’s enthusiasm. “We’re excited to be able to travel across the country and showcase our talented team and get everyone excited for the Olympic Games. Some of the most talented softball players of the world are in the United States, so it will be good to get out there and face some of the top athletes in the sport. It’s a great way to prepare for the ultimate stage, the Olympics.”

Similar U.S. “barnstorming” tours have been organized by the ASA in each of the previous three Olympic appearances in 1996, 2000 and 2004, according to McKeown. “The purpose is to prepare our team for Olympic competition in addition to exposing the sport to fans and potential new players, as well as a give-back to our local associations that conduct softball programming under the ASA umbrella,” he said.