USA Softball Council Meetings

[Manny A]

Originally Posted by Big Slick

It has everything to do with aligning rules across other organizations and nothing to do with men's FP.

Originally Posted by Big Slick

I think this is just a matter of not writing two separate preliminaries for genders.

Okay, maybe it's just me, but it sounds like you're providing conflicting arguments. And USA admits in their press release that this rule change was made to align both the male and female pitching rule.

Whatever the real reason, I was okay with the first rule change that allows the pitcher to set up for the signal with the non-pivot foot on or behind the plate. It does bring USA in line with NFHS, NCAA (which also changed to this for next year) and WBSC. I like the consistency. But then to throw in the step-back to align only with NFHS (I doubt NCAA or WBSC will ever allow that) just seems like, well, a step back (no pun intended) in their thinking.

Claiming that they did it to align male and female play is not a compelling enough argument for me. If that's their rationale, they should've just gone all in and allow leaping as well, in my opinion.