SSUSA 40 Masters Developed From Early Vision

April 1, 2015 – Joe Lecak

By Joe Lecak

Softball News Report

My fondest memories of softball are from my years playing in the 40 division in leagues and in tournaments.

When I lived in New Jersey in the 1990s, I rediscovered softball after a 15-year absence in a 40 and over league in Middlesex County. In 2003 I moved to Las Vegas and discovered a hidden gem in SSSUSA’s over 40 division.

(SSUSA had begun offering a 40s Division in 2002, with Mike Clary becoming the first SSUSA 40 Masters Director and helping to set up the rules and the initial division.)

In 2004, I convinced a group of friends from New Jersey to come to Las Vegas and play in the over 40 division World Championships.

At the time there were only a handful of teams entered but we had a blast, we played a half dozen game and most importantly I met Terry Hennessy, along with Fran Dowell.

I played in two more world tournaments before switching over to the 50 division. At that time the ASA over 40 world tournament was the undisputed king with SSUSA an afterthought.

There was something about an underdog that was attractive and Terry and Fran saw the potential of growing the division. They asked Mike Williams and myself to attend the Senior Softball Summit in Phoenix in 2008 to make a presentation.

The Summit organizations were ASA, USSSA, Huntsman, ISSA, SSWS, SPA, LVSSA and SSSUSA.

Mike and I attended the last two days and we were given 30 minutes on Saturday to deliver our pitch. We also met informally with most of the associations and the response back to us was uniformly the same except for SSUSA.

ASA already had the 40 division so our presentation did not interest them. The others we spoke to saw no reason to add the 40 division because we weren’t seniors. We would be taking up valuable resources such as fields and umps which were better served for their senior divisions.

Mike and I could not convince them that eventually if you’re 40 something you will turn 50 and you would have a captive audience. In my opinion ASA would still be king of the 40s if they had a viable 50 and over program.

Our pitch was simple: Keep all the senior rules including bats, offer more than one tournament that did not interfere with the open-age championships because most of the 40 players had as their primary focus their open-age tournament teams, offer unlimited home runs because who doesn’t love to pound the ball over a fence, require registration so they could monitor who would be entering their over-50 division to minimize the chance that a major plus talent slipped through the cracks and finally rate the 40 teams so that there weren’t local pickup teams getting hammered by the well-funded teams.

Mike and I were convinced that whoever dominated the 40 division would reap the benefits as these players that turned 50 would stick with what they were accustomed to. Terry, Fran and Dave were all ears and results proved our vision right on track. In 2002, ASA Worlds had 42 teams and SSUSA 4. By 2007, ASA had 21 teams and SSUSA attracted 14 Masters teams. By 2010, SSUSA had pulled ahead of ASA (21 teams to 10) and in 2014 SSUSA attracted 52 40 men's Masters teams to the World Masters Championships.