Kickball Graduates From Elementary School

Sept. 24, 2002 — -- Most kids probably know one day they have to graduate from the kickball field, get a real job and do the boring stuff grown-ups do.

Jimmy Walicek became an IT consultant. But then he got a better job — kickball executive.

"There's nothing that compares to hitting the big red ball and hearing that noise," says Walicek, full-time chief operating officer of the Washington-based World Adult Kickball Association Inc. "It's almost impossible to describe, but it's sort of a bowwmmmmm! — right off the foot and into the field."

They may have grown up, but for increasing thousands of American 20- and 30-somethings, recess still plays out on the kickball field — but now it adjourns to the local bar for laughs over the game's highlights and pratfalls.

"When they kick the ball for the first time since fifth grade they get this magical smile on their face where they remember the good old days," Walicek says.

Co-ed adult kickball leagues have become the rage in Washington, Milwaukee, Seattle, St. Louis, Baltimore, San Francisco and towns in Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Some leagues claim dozens of teams and thousands of players, and organizers see more expansion next summer. Walicek's organization is planning new divisions in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Philadelphia.

"I'm really amazed; it's taking off all over the country," says Keith Flournoy, recreation coordinator in Oak Park, Mich., north of Detroit, who initially had to turn away hundreds of late applicants when he announced a municipal adult kickball league last year.

"I think it touched on a lot of people's childhoods," he says. "I'm amazed every time I mention it to somebody. They say, 'Man, kickball? I haven't played that since I was a kid.' … If I talk to 100 people, 99 give the same response."

Schoolyard Fixture

As almost any elementary school graduate knows, kickball is similar to baseball or softball, except instead of hitting a little, white, hard ball, players kick a fat, soft, red rubber ball — generally making the game easier. Unlike baseball, players can be put out by being hit in the torso with a thrown ball.

For decades, kids have spontaneously run pickup kickball games during school recess, educators say.

However, even as kickball becomes more popular with adult players, it is falling out of favor among physical education teachers. It involves too much standing around and too few physical demands, says Judith Young, executive director of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education.

"We need to modify it in physical education classes," perhaps by using fewer players or more confined spaces to heighten the action, she says. That way, "the kids can get the good things out it — which is learning to kick, learning to throw, learning the strategy of a bases-type game."

For adults, Young applauds the kickball leagues.

"That's great," she says. "It gets people active and they have fun. And if it gets them back to positive memories at school, a time when they were young, that's great, too."

Turning Back the Clock

At least since Citizen Kane mulled the significance of "Rosebud," people have craved nostalgia and longed for their youths, psychologists say. Some say that public yearning is getting more intense now, as adult life, jobs and careers become less stable.

"We've become a population of highly educated and well-dressed people who go down to the loading docks each morning and wait to be hired on — only we don't load ships, we work on computers," says Armond Aserinsky, a North Wales, Pa., clinical psychologist who specializes in studying the media and popular culture. "Great big companies that used to have stable work forces are now hiring consultants."

At first, upon hearing of the kickball fad, Aserinsky considered it in a psychological context as a way to connect with one's youth. But suddenly, he, too, seemed to connect.

"This is brilliant, actually," he said, laughing out loud. "Kickball."

‘A Kid’s Game’

The reaction of new adult players is typical, league organizers say.

"You can see their face go from disbelief to, 'Wow, that's kind of cool,'" says Walicek of WAKA, whose first league may have started the kickball craze in 1998.

Next thing you know, they're signing up for kickball leagues on whimsically named teams like the Playground Bullies, the Grass Kickers, Kickin' Balls and Takin' Names, Kick Asphalts and Pity the Fool.

If they're lucky, they might win a regional championship. This past summer, the Milk Money Millionaires of WAKA's D.C.-Potomac division took the "Founder's Cup," and Twisted Frogmeat won the "Golden Lunchbox" of the Milwaukee-based Midwest Unconventional Sports Association's kickball league. But that's not necessarily the point, says the latter league's founder.

"I don't want to call it a silly game, but it's a kid's game basically," says Joe Szatmary of Milwaukee. "There are teams that have zero athleticism that still have a great time playing. It's not as intimidating [as other games or sports]. It's not as skill-necessary."

Plus, says Szatmary, everybody gets to have fun over beers, kid around on MUSA's Internet chat room, or participate in other MUSA events such as dodge ball tournaments or the "Big Wheel 500," named after the children's plastic three-wheeler.

Kickball Romance

In the Oak Park, Mich., league, the social aspect went even further. Between games of a doubleheader on Aug. 2, Jeff Somers proposed marriage to his girlfriend, co-worker and kickball teammate, Krista Swindlehurst.

Somers' and Swindlehurst's families and friends, intrigued by stories of the kickball league, were at the game, and teammates "burst out in happiness, joy, clapping, yelling, screaming," as Swindlehurst accepted, Somers says. A kickball most likely will be present at their May 16 nuptials.

"In grade school, I had a girl sit on top of me and say she was going to marry me," Somers says, "but [I] never in my dreams thought I would actually propose to somebody on a [kickball] field."