Having recently completed a two year term as executive director of ZES Educational Services, Lori Manning is pursuing a master of business administration at Western Governors University. Beyond her professional and academic work, Lori Manning is an avid sports fan and experienced coach of softball.
Softball made its debut at the Summer Olympics in 1996, despite American and Japanese efforts to have the sport added to the Olympic program as early as the 1940s. These efforts were unsuccessful mostly due to the fact that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) requires a minimum of 11 countries to be capable of fielding a competitive team and for at least 29 countries to maintain some semblance of a national program.
In 1995, the IOC announced that softball would make its Olympic debut in Atlanta, Georgia, the following year. The first gold medal in softball went to the United States, 3-0 winners over China. The US team repeated as gold medalists in 2000 and 2004 and as silver medalists in 2008, when the gold medal went to Japan at the Beijing Olympics.
The international softball community was disappointed to learn that the IOC had voted to eliminate softball from the summer program for the 2012 London Olympics, a decision that was upheld for the 2016 summer games in Brazil. However, an IOC vote in 2016 to expand the summer program included the reintroduction of both softball and baseball. Both sports will return to the Olympic stage in 2020 at the Tokyo summer games.
