The thud of a perfectly pitched ball meeting a powerful kick is a familiar sound across Liberia, where kickball has blossomed into a national obsession. Professional player Perryline Jimmie, 23, embodies the sport's energy, her sprints to first base often met with jubilant cheers from her teammates.
A close cousin to baseball, kickball is particularly beloved by women throughout the West African nation. Its pitches and bases can be found in diverse settings, from bustling schoolyards to open public squares and dusty dirt fields. Since its introduction in the 1960s, the sport's widespread appeal has cemented its status as the country's second-most popular, surpassed only by football.
Kickball in Liberia has the rules of baseball but there are no bats, and players kick a soccer ball instead of the larger, lightweight ball used for the game in other places.
There also are no men.
“In Liberia, (kickball) is our tradition,” said Jimmie, who noted many girls start playing kickball from an early age. “This is why you see women playing kickball in Liberia.”
How kickball came to Liberia
In 1964, Peace Corps volunteer Cherry Jackson noticed that, unlike boys, the students at the all-girls school where she taught in Monrovia, the capital, didn't play any sports, according to Emmanuel Whea, president of Liberia’s National Kickball League.
Jackson, an American, tried to teach the girls baseball but quickly realized they were much better at hitting the ball with their feet. That was the start of what became a custom for girls in the country of about 5.6 million people.
“When you’re a girl growing up in Liberia, you will play kickball,” Whea said.
Kickball is played in other parts of the world, including in the United States, where it is a common elementary school game for girls and boys. But only in Liberia is there a women-only professional league.
The National Kickball League was created in 1994 to bring people together as Liberia was reeling from a civil war.
The league was set up "to bring the ladies together and use them (as part of) the reconciliation process of Liberia," Whea said. “We had just left the civil war, and everybody had just scattered ... So kickball was one of those sports used to bring Liberians together so they could have the time to hear the peace messages.”
Whea has big plans for the league, including expanding it to men and introducing the game to other African countries. However, his mission has been complicated by a lack of resources, especially in a region where women's sports often are underfunded.
Saydah A. Yarbah, a 29-year-old mother of two, admits it is hard to make ends meet on her athlete's salary despite playing kickball for 10 years. Her earnings are “not even near” what male athletes earn, she said.
In Liberia, many sports, including soccer, are male-dominated. Despite kickball being a sport played by women, the league is led by men from the coaches to the referees and league officials.
The league encourages women but they really don’t want to be coaches, Whea said.
"Their husbands might have a problem with them working full time (and) for some, their relationship will not allow it,” he said
Yarbah plans to change that narrative by becoming a coach when she retires, allowing her to share her passion for the sport with others, including her two sons, she said.
“They are not going to play kickball for now,” she said. “But probably in the future, they are going to introduce kickball to men.”
For the moment, kickball remains a women's game. Men sometimes come during their practice, Yarbah said, but they do not stand a chance.
"They don’t know the techniques of the game,” she said. “So we always win.”
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