Laura Berg; three time gold medalist
Laura Berg’s athletic resume rivals that of any top professional athlete. She’s the most successful Olympic softball athlete, having medaled four times. She’s also 2nd all time in NCAA career hits.
Despite her accolades, Berg never earned enough income from softball to pay her bills. To this day, she stresses about her 401k, something an MLB equivalent would never think twice about. Yet, she considers herself extremely fortunate.
“I've just been incredibly, incredibly lucky and blessed to be able to play as long as I played,” she said. “And…to represent the USA.”
— Laura Berg
Now, as a softball coach at Oregon State University, and also for Team USA, Berg is excited to see the next generation of female athletes have an opportunity to experience it. “Being up on that podium, listening to the national anthem, and watching your flag raised higher than everybody else's, there's just no greater feeling than that,” she said.
After being left out of the 2024 Paris Games it was recently announced that softball would be included in the 2028 LA Olympic Games and just like that the Olympic dream was brought back to life. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced on Oct. 16 that it approved LA28's proposal for the addition of softball, along with four other sports including baseball. While it’s still over four years away, for softball athletes and fans across the world, it represents a glimmer of hope for the future; the opportunity to finally see the sport they love being played on the biggest stage again.
The Olympics, as Berg puts it, is the “pinnacle” of softball, the ultimate goal. It’s a dream for all young softball players. Unfortunately for many, it will never be more than that — a dream. And, an intangible one. Over the years, softball’s inclusion in the Games has been unstable.
Softball’s complicated Olympic history
Softball was first introduced during the 1996 Atlanta Games after years of advocacy. It continued to be featured until 2008, before it was abruptly dropped from the program before the 2012 Games. Since then, it has been on and off the program depending on the year.
After a hiatus from the Games, softball was finally brought back for the 2020 Japan Olympic Games. With college softball in the US peaking with its highest viewership numbers ever, and professional leagues popping up around the world, it seemed as if softball might have finally gotten its big break. Unfortunately, this excitement was short lived as it was announced that softball would not be included in the 2024 Paris Games.
Softball athletes train year-round waiting for the Summer Games that take place once every four years. To most, four years seems like an eternity, but for softball players, once every four years is the best-case scenario. The current situation is a perfect example. Since softball will not be included in the 2024 Games that means that there will be an eight year break in between Olympic appearances. This is the sad reality for softball which isn’t a core Olympic sport. It’s currently recognized as a feature sport, meaning every single Olympic rotation is reevaluated by the Olympic committee to decide if it will be included.
Why not Softball?
The World Baseball Softball Confederation has expanded to include softball federations from 141 countries. Professional leagues with seasons outside of international competition have started to take root in the US, Canada and Japan. Despite its massive growth softball is often left off the Olympic agenda.
Olympic committee member Alan Abrahamson said that baseball and softball are seen as a package by most of the members, so they influence each other's inclusion.
With this in mind, a large part of the problem, according to Abrahamson, is baseball. The MLB does not send its best players to the Olympics the way basketball does, or hockey in the years it actually plays. “So that's a huge problem… because it severely limits the ability of baseball to say, ‘Oh, we're sending our best,’ and the Olympics is supposed to be about the best of the best,” Abrahamson said.
Softball is caught in the middle. And as much as softball is its own distinct sport, some significant percentage of the membership thinks of softball as baseball for girls according to Abrahamson.
The second reason it's left out is that it’s a team sport, and the IOC has a cap of 10,500 athletes. So when selecting sports, the number of athletes a sport contributes is a factor. If numbers are close, it makes more sense for the committee to add an individual sport such as break dancing, Abrahamson explained, than a teamsport that adds hundreds of athletes to the program.
Lastly, according to Abrahamson, the IOC is dominated by Europeans and European interests. Neither baseball or softball are wildly popular in Europe. “To be super blunt about it is that both of these sports are hugely identified with the United States,” Abrahamson said. “And right or wrong, fair or not, the United States is not the most favored nation in the Olympics.”
For the love of the game
Without Olympic softball, fans of the sport have had to look elesewhere to watch the game they love. In the United States this has manifested in an increased interest in college softball. Over the last couple years the Women's College World Series (WCWS) has actually brought in more viewers than the Men's College World Series (CWS).
Data from ESPN; CWS: College World Series (Baseball) and WCWS: Women's College World Series (Softball)
Although there has been an increase in fandom and opportuniites to play post college, being a professional sofball player is no walk in the park. Almost all professional softball athletes have to work second jobs to make ends meet.
Despite the hardships tied to being a professional softball player, thousands of female players will flock to tournaments across the nation hoping to one day make one of the coveted Olympic team spots. One of these people is McKenna Charbonneau, 16, a high school softball athlete at Amador Valley High School in Pleasanton, California, who has aspirations of playing at the college level and beyond.
At age five when she fell in love with the sport and made the decision she wanted to play in college, she drew a lot of inspiration from the softball Olympians that came before her. She specifically remebers meeting professional softball player Val Arioto at one of her youth practices and being in awe of her as an Olympian.
They are “doing it for the love of the game,” Charbonneau said. “There's no money in it. They're just doing it because they actually love the game.”
She is just one of many young women who’ve been impacted by Olympic softball. Through softball, many girls have had the opportunity to obtain prestigious educations, see the world and benefit from the life skills accuired through team sports. And for some, the Olympic goal following the announcement of the 2028 LA Games is still in reach.
One of these people is Makenna Smith, 24, a former college softball athlete who recently graduated with a premed degree from the University of California Berkeley. Smith is currently playing professional softball in the US for the Women's Fast Pitch League (WFP) with aspirations to play in the 2028 Olympic games. Having played with team USA this summer Makena hopes to make a chilhood deam of hers come true in 2028, "when I was little, the Olympic games when I knew there was Olympic games for softball I was like ok that's what I want to do."
While the 2028 Olympics is still over four years away its a glimmer of hope for the softball community to keep pushing forward.
