Although the Amateur Softball Association (ASA) is known as having the highest quality of softball in every age classification, the ASA's membership base has been built from thousands of local (recreational) softball leagues throughout the United States. These leagues are organized through local park and recreation offices, private softball complexes or directly through one of the local ASA offices.
These thousands of leagues register hundreds of thousands of teams that are ultimately organized by 83 local ASA affiliates. Typical leagues play 8-10 week schedules in the Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter largely driven by prevailing weather conditions.
Teams looking to fulfill their competitive desires begin traveling, often crossing city and state boundaries, competing in ASA organized, county, district, state, regional and national tournaments. These tournaments, in many cases, award berths to the ultimate prize in softball-the ASA National Championships. An estimated twenty percent of ASA registered softball teams compete at some level of Championship Play.
The administrators that volunteer their time to run the 83 local affiliates are commissioners. These commissioners have a staff comprised of a youth (JO) commissioner, umpire-in-chief and at-large-player representative. Based on how many teams they register in their area and the amount of tournaments they organize, the staff is increased accordingly. Many of these administers maintain voting privileges on ASA's council that ultimately vote on the rules of softball and the code that governs the association
For a complete description on voting procedures and by-laws of the ASA, please download a copy of the ASA Code by clicking on the link located on the navigational bar on the left.