NAGAAA

August 25 - 30

Seattle Washington 2008

Open Division

What is NAGAAA?

    The North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAAA) was created in 1977 to be a non-profit, international organization comprised of men and women dedicated to promoting amateur athletics specifically for the gay and lesbian community. NAGAAA was formed to encourage and promote the participation of gay men and women in organized softball competition. Currently, 34 cities make up the membership of NAGAAA in the United States and Canada.

    There are two divisions in NAGAAA:   Open and Women's.    Only women can belong in the Women's division. In the Open division, teams may be comprised of both men and women. The Open division is divided into four subdivisions: A, B, C and D. These subdivisions pertain to the competitive level of play; "A" being the most competitive and "D " the least (hence called "recreational"). The Women's division is divided into four subdivisions called A, B, C and D as of the 2006 GSWS.

    NAGAAA provides leagues with the opportunity to travel to member cities in order to meet and compete with gay and lesbian athletes from across North America. Some join for the competition while others for the socials and networking potentials. In its annual spring meetings, usually held in mid-February, NAGAAA informs member cities of upcoming tournaments among its membership, paramount amongst these tournaments is the Gay Softball World Series (GSWS) held each year in a different member city of NAGAAA. Every member league is encouraged to send at least one team to each GSWS as its representative.

What is NAGAAA Women?

Getting to Know NAGAAA (Part I of a Series)*

Do you know who NAGAAA is? Why it is important to be a member of this organization? Why "This is Where You Should BE Playing Softball?" I am writing a new series of articles to help you find out more about NAGAAA and to solicit help form YOU on how NAGAAA can grow and become an even stronger organization, especially at the local level. Each article will focus on a different aspect of "Getting to Know NAGAAA", and each one will ask you for your insights. I hope you will help us with your comments and ideas.

Several different attempts have been made at finding our "Who We Are" - the Women's Division of NAGAAA has approximately 5,000 members across the country and Canada. But, we don't know a lot about US. Most of our attempts to find out more about our organization have been pretty unsuccessful so far. The main reason for that is there is not much interface between the individual members from our local associations and NAGAAA directly. We must change that.

The NAGAAA Women's Board will be making a concerted effort in our next two business meetings (August 2006 and February 2007) to find ways to interact with the local members directly. This will help us get the word out on who we are and why being a member of this association is important. We need to know who we are and the individual members need to know who NAGAAA is - we must make this fundamental change if we are to grow to the next level.

*Copied from the NAGAAA Women website front page, 8/26/2003.