FAYETTEVILLE — A childhood recess game has graduated into adulthood.
Northwest Arkansas adults, male and female, now have the opportunity to participate in the game ofkickball. They can stand on the home plate of a baseball field and kick the familiar red inflatable rubber ball rolled toward them. When playing as an adult, the throws are likely harder and screams from teammates in the dugout are louder. Kickball has officially grown up.
Or maybe not.
Team jerseys, viking helmets and knee-high socks are some of the items donned during kickball games.
As well as team shirts, most of the groups have their own cheer. Paula Lawrence said since her team, We Got the Runs, has been undefeated, they do a certain chant at the end of each game. One team member yells, "Who just got the runs?" and all the other players shout, "We got the runs," she said.
Natalie Atkinson, a member of the Brew Dogs, said her team makes a howling sound. Since the team name includes "dogs," her team is working on a bark, she said.
The Viking Kittens expresses their spirit bywearing gold viking helmets with white horns in both the dugout and on the field to all of their games, team member David Adams said.
The team Papa Smurf and the 9 Dwarfs show their quirky attitude with their socks and music. Team member Eric Mendoza said many of the players are wearing knee-high socks as part of their uniform, and a few members are trying to get them to wear blue pairs to match their jerseys. He said the team members also listen to music when they are playing. He brings his iPod and another player brings the speakers, which blares hip-hop and rap music through the air. He said it pumps them up, and the one game in which they didn't play music was boring.
Teams, which play in the fall and spring, are not required to have uniforms, but many of the teams opted to have shirts made with their name and logo, said Mike Peterman, one of the directors of the newly formed Northwest Arkansas Kickball Association who shares responsibilities with D'lorah Hughes and Bryan Ellithorpe.
A game for everyone
Peterman said he liked the thought of playing kickball because anyone can play it. He said he enjoys seeing people havefun playing in the league and getting a little exercise.
"You can be an average person and still be good at this game and still play," he said.
The kickball league teams up at noon every Sunday on the softball fields at the Randal Tyson Sports Complex in Springdale. There are 17 teams, and each game is about an hour and 15 minutes long, Peterman said. Two fields are used to play simultaneous games and a third field is reserved for practice. The players have to be at least 18 years old, but there is no age limit, he said. Each team must have at least nine people on the roster and at least four female players.
The participating teams, which were charged a $300 fee to join the league, began playing a sevenweek season lineup on Aug. 30. Details about the league can be found online at nwarkickball.com.
Peterman said he started a league in Northwest Arkansas because there was nothing like it in the area during the fall and spring seasons. Ellithorpe played for a team in the Little Rock Kickball Association, and he decided it would be a good idea to start a league similar to that one, Peterman said.
"They're kind of like our sister league," he said. "They all helped us get started and show us the ropes."
Peterman already considers his league a big accomplishment for gathering 17 teams in the first season, he said. The Little Rock league started out with 16 teams, and now in its 11th season, is up to almost 100, he said.
Peterman and the other directors approached the Springdale Parks and Recreation almost a year ago with the idea for the league and began working out the details a few months ago, he said.
The rules of kickball are similar to baseball, Peterman said, except the ball is kicked. There are nine innings with three outs in each. A player will beout if the ball he kicked is caught in the air or the player is tagged with the ball, he said. Another variation from baseball is that an opposing team member can throw the inflatable ball at the kicking player to get an out, such as hitting him in the back on his run to a base.
"It's just getting touched by the ball, period," he said.
One of the unwritten rules is to have fun.
"I haven't seen anybody out there not enjoying themselves and having fun," he said.
Umpires regulate foul balls and calls for outs at each game, he said. Players in the league take turns as umpires for other teams' games. Peterman said there is a game schedule as well as an umpire schedule for each team. A team can choose specific players to always be umpires or a team can rotate multiple players to act as umpires. All of the players who are umpires attended a camp before the start of the season to learn kickball rules, he said.
Competitive or fun?
Smurfs, dogs and kittens all play kickball in this league. Not exactly, but some of the teams have these animals in their names. Other team names include puns such as Brews on First, Great Balls of Fire and Red Ball & Vodka.
Peterman said the teams are made up of people like law students, lawyers, restaurant employees and bar owners and operators.
"We have every type of person out there," he said.
The age of participants range from 18 to mid-50s with the majority between 18 and 25, but there are some older people playing "that are pretty dadgum good," he said.
Peterman had the opportunity to play on a team as well as supervise. One of the teams dropped out of the league shortly after it started, so Peterman decided to create a team so everyone would still get to play the same number of games throughout the season. Many of his team members arefamily members, such as his cousin Ellithorpe, who drives up from Little Rock, and his wife, Paula Peterman, he said.
Some of the teams want to have fun and some are competitive, he said. The team with the best record as of the third week of play was We Got the Runs, who are undefeated.
"They seem to be the front-runner right now," he said.
Lawrence, a member of We Got the Runs, said her 18-member team has soccer players and other athletes, which she believes helps them to win. However, she said it doesn't always matter who's on the team and how good they are at sports. The main strategy is where people are placed on the field and how you play them, she said.
Lawrence said the team takes the competitiveness to an extent, but their goal is to always have a goodtime.
"First and foremost, it's about having fun," she said.
Lawrence joined the team with her husband Kyle. They have a 19-month old son named Kale, and she said it's been fun to play kickball with their friends. She said she likes having "grown-up time" with her husband and still being able to play a competitive sport.
"It definitely gives us a chance to laugh at each other, but also if one of us makes a good play or something, we're real encouraging," she said.
The league is also a family atmosphere, so her son can enjoy watching them, she said.
Tony Strickland, a team member of the Brew Dogs, said his team of 14 players are very laid-back.
He likes kickball because it is a stress release. He said his team doesn't care about winning or losingas long as they're having fun.
"The older we get, we're less concerned with the competition than we are just having a good time," he said.
Another member of his team, Adam Berry, has fun while playing kickball by smoking a cigar, which is his trademark, Strickland said.
Strickland has experienced a little competitiveness while playing in the league, along with an injury. During a game, he had a head-on collision with another teammate when they forgot to call who was catching the ball on a pop fly. He said the other player is 6 foot 3 inches and 200 pounds, and Strickland came out of the collision a little battered and bruised.
Strickland said he hasn't played kickball since the fourth grade. Lawrence said she hadn't played since elementaryschool as well but compares the game to riding a bicycle.
"You don't forget how to ride a bicycle," she said. "You don't really forget how to play kickball."
Mendoza said he hasn't played kickball in about 20 years, but he enjoys playing kickball in the league because it allows people to break away from their jobs and pretend to be a kid again.
"The game's the same," he said. "We've just gotten older."
A charitable league
At the end of the season, Peterman said there will be a playoff tournament with each team having seeds based on their team's season record, he said.
"Of course the best team is going to be the top seed, and the worst team, probably my team, will be the bottom seed," he said with a laugh.
Trophies will be given out for first, second and third places. He said a spirit award will likely also be given to an enthusiastic, crazy, dressed-up team. The playoff tournament, which includes a cookout, will be Oct. 25.
Since some of the teams are more competitive than others, Peterman said he would like to have a few separate leagues in the spring season, such as a lower level, intermediate and expert. Some of the teams from this season may opt to rejoin, possibly in one of the upper leagues, he said. He said he believes all of these teams will be back and anticipates the number of teams to double by the spring season.
Peterman wants his league to be charitable to the community as well. He said they plan to have a charity tournament during the off-season but has not yet chosen an organization. He said they will also have a food drive and a backpack drive to donate school supplies to children. He said after the fees for the fields are paid, the rest of that fund will also be donated to a charitable organization.
"We're definitely going to be really communityinvolved and give back," he said.
Living, Pages 11, 16 on 09/27/2009