Peter Rozynski was selected to work one of the Amateur Softball Associations National Championships.
On 4-8 August 2010, the ASA conducted the 16U Girls A Fast Pitch Southern Nationals held in Ft Myers, FL.
Peter Rozynski was one of 12 umpires selected to work this event. 8 of the umpires were from Florida and 4 were from Alabama. Roughly, 5% of the 44,000 ASA registered umpires get selected to work an ASA National Championship. This in itself is an honor. The fact that Peter is a Deaf umpire makes the feat even more remarkable.
At the pre-tournament Manager’s Luncheon, the umpires are introduced to the manager’s for the first time. Tournament Umpire in Chief Matt Dunbar pointed out that being selected to work a National is an honor and achievement for an umpire and that being selected was a process that is earned through demonstrated competence and a thorough working knowledge of the softball playing rules and mechanics of umpiring. He singled out Peter to the coaches so that they would know that there was an umpire there that was deaf and assured them that Peter was just as deserving and that they should not let the fact that he is deaf change the way that they coached their teams. He was not to be treated any differently. They just needed to be aware that they would have to communicate a little differently with this umpire than with hearing umpires. They needed to address him face to face so that Peter could read their lips. If they still had trouble communicating, there was still the option of communicating with his partner.
Matt Dunbar received many compliments on the job that Peter did during the course of the tournament and in fact selected Peter to work 3d base in a 3 umpire system for the Championship Game. “Peter had as good a tournament as any umpire I have ever seen. That is a direct result of his hard work and dedication to learning all facets of the umpiring mechanics and techniques for the sport of softball. The one facet that Peter does extremely well is to give visual signals that are clear, concise. big and powerful. He understands the need to communicate this way probably more than your average hearing umpire. It is awfully hard to find flaws in his hustle either. I congratulate Peter for an outstanding job at this tournament”.
About the ASA
The Amateur Softball Association (ASA), a volunteer driven, not-for-profit organization based in Oklahoma City, OK, was founded in 1933 and has evolved into the strongest softball organization in the country. The growth and development of the association led the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) to name the ASA the National Governing Body of Softball, pursuant to the Amateur Sports Act of 1978.
The ASA has many important responsibilities as the national governing body of softball in the United States, including regulating competition to insure fairness and equal opportunity to the millions of player who annually play the sport.
When the ASA entered the softball picture in 1933, the sport was in a state of confusion with no unified set of playing rules and no national governing body to provide guidance and stability. The ASA changed all that by adopting softball’s first universally accepted rules of play and by organizing consistent and fair competition across the nation.
From this beginning, the ASA has become one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing sports organizations and now sanctions competition in every state through a network of 83 local associations. The ASA has grown from a few hundred teams in the early days to over 250,000 teams today, representing a membership of more than four million.
