Dubbed the California Softball “Commotion”, the franchise will be the first west coast offering from the NPF league since 2005, when the California Sunbirds competed in their second and final season of existence.
A news release from National Pro Fastpitch included a notation that the Commotion franchise would be ‘prioritizing players that are familiar to the west coast market.’
The team is owned by Damon Zumwalt, founder and CEO of Contemporary Services Corporation – notably abbreviated as CSC, the same initials as the new softball franchise – which is one of the largest event staff and security companies in North America. Zumwalt is a former UCLA football player and wrestler.
“I am pleased to have the ability and opportunity to contribute to enabling these talented young women to pursue softball at the professional level in the NPF,” a league press release quoted Zumwalt as saying. “And I am specifically committed to promoting the addition of west coast teams, so that we can have a complete cross country competition. There is plenty of talent to create a very, very strong league, and women’s softball is fun to watch with a great deal of action. One of my only regrets in life was not being able to compete on the world stage after college. That is unfortunately, and too often for women, not even an option. I am proud of my contribution to providing more opportunities for more women to continue their careers at the highest level of this sport.”
Named as general manager of the new California franchise was Deb Hartwig. Hartwig is the co-owner of the Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic and is the owner of Just Softball. Hartwig also previously served in an executive role for National Pro Fastpitch.
The news of the Commotion’s addition to the NPF offering in 2020 is the latest item in an up-and-down summer for the league. The NPF announced in August a change in the formatting of scheduling for the 2020 summer season. In lieu of traditional head-to-head individual series’, league teams will now compete in round robin-style tournaments with a “weighted point system that will award points for both head to head, and series wins.”
National Pro Fastpitch, in recent years, has prioritized and heralded the additions of several league teams that include partnerships with international squads, such as the Australian; Canadian; Mexican; and Chinese national teams. The exact structure of what the league will offer in 2020 is not clear at this point, with Australia, Canada, and Mexico all having qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics through the course of this summer. The Tokyo Games will take place in late July and early August of 2020.
In September of this year, the defending and 5-time league champion USSSA Pride announced that they would be withdrawing from the league at the end of the calendar year. The Mexican national team – one of the teams competing in the afore-mentioned Tokyo Olympics in 2020 – announced a renewal of their partnership with the Cleveland Comets franchise for the ’20 NPF campaign, though how the national team’s participation will be scheduled has not yet been confirmed.
