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Photo by Erin Nelson.
Team USA’s Haylie McCleney motions at second base after beating a tag in a game against the Alabama Stars at Rhoads Stadium on the University of Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa in 2017. McCleney is one of Team USA’s 18 players on this year’s roster that will participate in The World Games this summer.
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Photo by Gary Cosby Jr., The Tuscaloosa News.
Montana Fouts, a member of Team USA, pitches against Texas on March 5 in the Crimson Classic.
The World Games 2022 will be an opportunity for several communities in and around the city of Birmingham to shine.
Hoover will host one of the 34 sports in the World Games competition, as the softball tournament will take place at Hoover Met Stadium over July 9-13.
The city had about four weeks to complete the Hoover Met’s transformation from a baseball field to a softball field, according to Erin Colbaugh, the director of the Hoover Parks and Recreation Department.
“We’re very excited,” Colbaugh said. “The Hoover Met Stadium has served as host to many high-profile events and games. … Softball is very popular in this area.”
Immediately following the conclusion of the SEC Baseball Tournament, which took place at the Met, on May 29, the stadium staff went to work.
Home plate was moved back, closer to the backstop; the infield was redone; and an outfield fence was brought in and installed. A softball field has much different dimensions than a traditional baseball field, so new clay was brought in to make up a new softball infield, and sod was planted to cover up the baseball infield.
There will not be any outfield bleachers added, but the capacity will still be near 11,000. A Twitter account (@hoovermetfields) was even set up to document the crew’s progress.
“The stadium holds 10,800, and we have the capability of adding some portable bleachers to the end of the concourses,” Colbaugh said.
The USA Women’s National Team will be one of eight teams in the competition, along with Japan, Australia, Canada, China, Italy, Mexico and Chinese Taipei. It will be the first chance for Team USA to avenge its loss to Japan in the gold medal game of the 2020 Summer Olympics (played in summer 2021).
“If you’re a fan of any bat-and-ball sport, you cannot miss this,” said Patrick Murphy, head softball coach at the University of Alabama.
Two of the 18 players on Team USA have been coached by Murphy — outfielder Haylie McCleney and pitcher Montana Fouts. McCleney, who attended Mortimer Jordan High School in Kimberly, starred for the Crimson Tide from 2013 to 2016, while Fouts has one year of eligibility remaining in an already-illustrious career in Tuscaloosa.
“For me to be able to step back into my hometown, put on a Team USA jersey and play in front of my family and friends, I never really thought I’d get another chance to do it, to be honest. I’m really, really excited,” McCleney said in a release.
Heather Tarr, the head coach of the University of Washington’s softball team, is the head coach of Team USA. She served as an assistant coach with the Olympic team last summer and led Washington to the national championship in 2009.
“This roster includes both experience and youth, and I truly believe this will be a team that our fans will love to follow as we compete for a gold medal at the 2022 World Games in Alabama this summer,” she said in a release. “I am so excited to see this team in action and we look forward to building on the foundations laid before us as we enter this era of USA Softball.”
Eight players from the Tokyo Summer Olympics are on this summer’s USA Women’s National Team roster. There are seven players on the team that currently or formerly played on teams in the SEC, so those players will get the opportunity to play this international competition in a familiar footprint for them.
This is the second event for which the Hoover Met has transitioned the stadium field to softball. The National Pro Fastpitch league held its championship series in Hoover in 2014 and 2015. Murphy remembers his jaw-dropping reaction to seeing the stadium outfitted for softball for the first time.
“It looked like a major league softball stadium,” he said. “All these teams are going to love playing here.”
Softball is an ascending sport nationally and particularly in Alabama. Auburn and Alabama have each made Women’s College World Series appearances in recent years. Just this year, Auburn University in Montgomery advanced to the NCAA Division II World Series, the University of Mobile finished as the runner-up in the NAIA World Series, and Wallace State and Snead State each made it to the NJCAA national tournament. Birmingham-Southern made an appearance in the NCAA Division III softball championship tournament last year as well.
For the World Games to be in Alabama is a source of pride to begin with, but for the headlining competition of the Games to be softball and for that to be played in this area, is “really, really cool,” Murphy said.
“There’s so many good colleges, they’re everywhere in this state. It’s really neat to see how far it’s come,” he said.
For more information on the World Games and to purchase tickets for the softball competition, visit twg2022.com.
