Kickball is Gaining Popularity, with Adults | ABC30 Fresno

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By ABC30

Sunday, September 6, 2009

New York If you follow the bouncing ball you might think this is recess at an elementary school. But this is no group of children. This is Chipwich Nation.

They are just one of an estimated 3,000 teams playing organized kickball across 30 states in the world adult kickball association.

Kickball player Sivan Cotel: "Most people usually are like, 'isn't that a grade school game?'"

But the truth is when you are all adults everyone plays it pretty competitively but mostly to have fun it's a good mix.

Wilson Chow has played kickball from San Francisco to Central Park. "I told myself I was going to quit kickball when I was 30, but obviously it hasn't happened. I just turned 30."

On this day he is tucked discreetly beneath New York's 59th Street Bridge with trams overhead and cars oblivious to the action below. It's just one of the odder places to find the game.

"Who would think in New York City you would have fields to play kickball on? I tell my friends and they are like this is crazy," said Kickball player Marlon Lewinter.

The idea, crazy, yet simple, came in 1998 at the dawn of the internet age, and spread quickly.

"It was instant 'are you kidding,' and then 'I haven't played since fifth grade' and so the memories are right there and that's one of the big things where we sort of knew we were on to something," said Johnny Lehane with the World Adult Kickball Association.

Johnny Lehane was one of three friends sitting in a Washington DC bar when WAKA was born. It was an appropriate birthplace, since the other half of WAKA's appeal seems to be the postgame partying.

"There are as many women as there are men in the league so sometimes I call it 45 minutes of kickball and 3 hours of socializing," said Lehane, "We can definitely boast lots and lots of kickball marriages and even a few dozen kickball babies out of this. It just seems if you're willing to be a little bit silly and play kickball than you also happen to be a pretty fun person to hang out with so we end up with a great social group."

Must be true, because recess never ended in a bar.