On warm July and August evenings at Center Street Ballpark, the sights and sounds of summer softball are everywhere. Spectators root for their friends and family from the stands, the crack of the bat is closely followed by cheers or friendly jeers, and players can often be seen catching up with friends on the opposing team while they round the bases. It’s community at its best, and the adult softball league has been a beloved part of Moab summers for decades.
Patrick Trim, associate parks, arts and rec director for Moab City Recreation, has been working with the city in some capacity for 10 years, and has been spearheading the softball league for the past few seasons. The league has almost doubled in size in the past two years, with 13 teams playing twice a week throughout the months of July and August. Welcoming players ages 15 and up, the co-ed teams are often broad mixes of friend groups, coworkers, or families, bringing together anyone from first-season high schoolers to league veterans who’ve been playing for years.
Softball is the largest adult program the city operates. Trim credits the league’s growing popularity to a shift in focus to welcome more casual players and promote friendly competition.
“I think right now people are just excited to be out recreating,” Trim says. “We’ve really made a concerted effort to make it about fun and inclusion – it’s just about people getting out and recreating and having a friendly league.”
Regular season games are nine innings or 75 minutes, whichever comes first. The league adopted a new pitching format in 2019 to allow the batting team to provide their own pitcher, and a “one-up” home run rule that caps the number of home runs a team can hit to prevent blow-outs and encourage more balls in play. Other guidelines such as a no-interference rule to prevent collisions and an all-time force-out rule at home plate prevent injury and keep players safe.
The community aspect is also a large part of the league’s success – the natural dugout downtime of softball makes it an inherently social game. Both equipment- and experience-wise, it has a low barrier to entry, and it’s a great excuse to meet up with friends a couple of nights a week.
On August 14, the league’s teams met for a double-elimination, end-of-season tournament to crown a champion. With Tuesday night rains wiping out the games of what was originally planned as a two-day tournament, Wednesday was jam-packed with activity late into the night as the teams battled through the bracket.
In the end, Team Puds, the No. 1 seed coming into the tournament, triumphed in the championship game in a hard-fought victory against Team Chaos, the No. 3 seed. The teams traded runs back and forth for the first few innings before the Puds pulled away for a 13-7 win.
“I feel like it was the best we played all year, and everyone just did their job,” team captain Jaci Shumway said. The team is largely made up of family – cousins, uncles, siblings, and close friends – and it was their first season playing as a group. Echoing Trim’s sentiment, Shumway says the best part about playing in the league is the people.
“It’s not even specifically our team. It’s all the teams you’re playing, or your friends, you know them and you grew up with them,” she says. “So that’s the most fun part, just hanging out and catching up with everyone a couple times a week. I love it.”
Although the softball league has wrapped up, Moab City Recreation offers several other programs, including pick-up volleyball, soccer, basketball, and pickleball. These programs are no-fee and drop-in based, encouraging people to just show up and play.
Anyone interested in learning more can find information at moabcity.org/637/Adult-Programs, or call 435-259-2255 to inquire about getting involved.
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