Why so many Gen Zers are saying, ‘Play ball!’
When Cassidi Hardy started playing recreational softball in 2011, she did not know that she and her teammates would become friends for life.
Ms. Hardy had recently graduated from the University of Boston, where she played and trained softball. She had not left her love for sport. So when a friend asked if she would be filled with a team with Boston Ski and Sports Club (BSSC), Ms. Hardy dug her heels again in the clay of the brand of a softball diamond. Since then, she has played in this team.
“My team has become my family,” she says. “These are the first people I call when I have good or bad news, and that’s just something I did not expect when I presented myself on the field for the first time.”
Why we wrote this
Americans – especially young adults – are looking for more links in person. Dating applications use less. The board game clubs are all the rage. To create community ties, others turn to team sports, softball in kickball.
Such stories become more common while American adults turn to team sports to improve their sports chops and establish sustainable social ties. The share of adults who play a team sport increased from 11% to 18% between 2020 and 2025, according to Civicsscience, a consumer insight. The interest is the strongest and fastest, among young adults: a separate CivicScience survey in April revealed that 52% of respondents aged 18 to 29 expressed their interest in joining a team, against 24% overall.
This is part of a broader trend of Americans – especially young adults – looking for more connections in person. General Zers also tends to favor more in person than their older colleagues and are less likely than older generations to use dating applications in search of romance. The board game clubs are all the rage. Some adults have even started to attend sleeping camps for adults to recreate the easy links formed during the childhood capture of the flag and rope.
The change could point out a lasting cultural change linked to the start of the COVVI-19 pandemic. While governments closed public spaces and a large part of social life moved online, people started to achieve how much they enjoyed relations and hobbies in person, explains Troy Glover, director of the Sandal Communities Research Network of Waterloo University in Ontario, Canada.
“People were faced with a circumstance in the pandemic where they appreciated leisure and leisure as something that was really important for their well-being,” he said.
Although people have remained connected via Zoom and other virtual means, “it is very difficult to replace the face -to -face interaction,” explains Dr. Glover. “There is something much more human in terms of this type of connection.”
It seems to be a clear draw for many of those who play with BSSC, who has seen his membership ball in recent years. Brett Crandall, director of commercial operations of the club, says that the number of teams almost tripled between 2020 and 2024, going from 1,076 to 3,100.
Ms. Hardy, who now manages the BSSC softball and kickball programs, says that it is the links that the participants form with their teammates and on the field who withdraw them week after week. She also notes that she now sees much over 20 years registering than she did before the pandemic.
“This generation begins to realize that this socialization is missing in person,” explains Ms. Hardy. But team sports give young adults, and everyone, “an open avenue to socialize and talk about things that happen in their lives that they may not have the chance to speak.”
“We are just here to have fun”
This camaraderie is exhibited during an unusually cold August evening at Donelly Field in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the BSSC teams gathered to play softball and kickball. On the softball diamond, in the middle of the satisfactory blow of bats striking balls, players of all ages sprint around the bases, rejoice and offer advice on form and game.
A mother of five, Ms. Hardy treats the teams she manages with an affection and an energy that you could expect from an experienced parent. Tonight, when she spots a player whom she has not seen for a while, she has been sprinting at the home base and rolling it in a bear hug. This is the kind of display of tenderness that she wants to cultivate on and off the field.
This spirit is going through many players here. While his team – affectionately known as “The Dirt Earters” – takes place on the ground, Emily Lafond, former academic hockey player, says that she and her friends are as much for social life as sport.
“We are just having fun,” she says. “We like to play sports, but in the end, we lose much more than winning, and it’s ok.”
More deeply in Donelly Field, Ms. Hardy underlines two teams preparing for a kickball match. Kickball, she says, is a particularly social sport – and the truth of this quickly becomes apparent. Members of a team, collectively known as “Kick, Kick, Boom!” quickly offered this journalist for a place in their game.
Indeed, the team looks as much like a close group of friends as to a sports business. During their match against the “Dropkick Muccis”, the members of “Kick, Kick, Boom!” have dispersed floating conversations in the canoe while they listen to successes like “Nothin” but a good time “of poison and” Low Rider “by the war. They joke with easy joviality and encourage their teammates as they launch a large rubber ball which you may remember days in the college.
“Kickball is an easy sport,” said the captain of the Aelish Brown team. “It’s less pressure, and people are sympathetic and simply excited.”
After the end of the match with equality, Finn Haghn goes around the field, dressed in a brilliant green shirt that corresponds to the rest of his team and a pair of athletic shorts. He shares the feeling of his captain. Joining the Kickball team was one of the first social things he did when he moved to the Boston region last September, and the team remains an important community.
“We dragged outside kickball in all kinds of ways,” he said. “The list at any time can be quite mixed, but the group cat always appears with all the original members. Everyone remains friends.”
Diamond romance
It is not only a scholarship between his teammates who makes such activities of the important parties of our social life, explains Dr. Glover. The people you meet regularly, but do not know beyond a face – for example, a player from another team – can recall an “imaginary community” wider than our social circle.
“What is really important for a functional society is that we are starting to consciously recognize others as belonging to our communities,” explains Dr. Glover. Virtual interactions, although an important part of social life in modern times, do not always come with these advantages, he says.
Back in softball Diamond, Ms. Lafond says that she is an excellent example of someone who has built a community through a recreational sports league. Not only does she spend time being active with her friends, but she also met her fiancé through the team.
“It’s pretty cool that I was able to meet my future husband to play softball,” she says. “It’s just a great environment to establish these lasting relationships, whether romantically or simply with friends.
“This is why we are still playing after all these years,” she adds.
