Quote:
Originally Posted by Manny A
I have a different theory that may be totally out of whack. But maybe USA made the move to attract more fast pitch players to participate in USA travel ball. By allowing the step-back, there may be more pitchers who opt to play travel because they now can pitch as they would during the high school season.
Seriously, this, to me, was a fix to something that wasn't broken. I've never heard anyone in any USA-related event (tournaments, clinics, meetings, etc.) clamor that they wanted the women's fast-pitch rule to align with the men's rule. So if that's really the only reason why they went that way, I think it's dumb. My suspicions tell me there's another underlying motivation that may be related to attracting more girls to the organization, now that there's so many other options out there (USSSA, PGF, NSA, USFA, etc.)
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It has everything to do with aligning rules across other organizations and nothing to do with men's FP (I would venture to say that a high percentage of players, coaches and umpires in the travel ball world have never watched a MFP game, much less know the rules are different for pitching). The change at the WBSC level (2018) influenced NCAA, with the coach of team USA lobbying for international pitching rule in NCAA (as you might know, leaping was a proposal for NCAA this year). The rest of the world plays WBSC rules, so I think it is a competitive disadvantage to have a pitching rule that is different.
NFHS has always been a "lone wolf" if you will, as they do not consider themselves as feeder programs for either NCAA or summer ball.
But it is curious why the change happened at the same time as NCAA. Knowing how submitted the proposal would probably shed some light on the subject (and I do not know that answer). I would like to know how close the vote was.