USA Softball Council Meetings

[Manny A]

Originally Posted by Big Slick

USA technically never 'moved away' from the step back. That has been the men's rule for as long as I've been around (circa 1997). I think this is just a matter of not writing two separate preliminaries for genders. And to my knowledge, NFHS has not required two feet on (well, since 2000).
...
It really isn't that big of a deal.

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.)