This is Brentt Eads of Line Drive Media…

Travel ball is all but over for the summer and in Georgia high school fall ball has already started, meaning the Fall season is upon us.

That will include great events we’ll be attending in a month or two—which will be upon us before we know it—such as the PGF Ultimate Challenge in Salinas, Calif. (Oct 30 to Nov. 1.) and the Clearwater Classic in Clearwater, Fla. (Nov. 13 to 15), both of which we’ll be attending.   

Before that, though, we have a lot happening and I’d to share with you some of the big things coming up as early as tomorrow!

First, let me say thank you to those in softball community who support our efforts to promote the sport.

We’re at an all-time high in subscriptions, revenues, page views and in all the key metrics that allow us to travel and attend events, hire new writers and generally raise our editorial coverage to a new level.

Much of our content is free and we do this to allow us to share stories and content on the wonderful people that make up our softball community.

I’m excited for some of the stories we are working on and will publish in the next few weeks—many are powerful and inspiring, and I know you’ll love them.

Still, we do have to pay our bills and have some content behind a pay wall!

To give you an idea of how much a value subscribing to Line Drive Media is, we average three stories per day during the weekdays and two each on Saturdays and Sundays. That comes out to about 19-20 stories per week or, let’s say, 80 per month.

With the monthly subscription rate of $15 per month, that averages out to 19 cents per article! If you do the annual sub of $108 for the year or $9 each month, the value comes down to 11 cents per article.

Good deal, I think…. Especially when you factor in 5 key projects we have upcoming that will premium access including one that starts this week and one that begins next week!

Click HERE to go to our subscription page for info on Annual & Monthly subscriptions

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1. All Summer Teams

Starting tomorrow (Monday, August 17), we’ll run our daily list of those standouts over the last few months in club play—those who can add “All-Summer Team” to their softball resumes.

The schedule will go as follows:

• 18U All-Summer Team on Monday (Aug. 17),
• 16U All-Summer Team on Tuesday (Aug. 18)
• 14U All-Summer Team on Wednesday (Aug. 19)
• 12U All-Summer Team on Thursday (Aug. 20)
• 10U All-Summer Team on Friday (Aug. 21)

2. The 2028 HOT 100 Player Rankings

The latest in our rankings series, the 2028’s will begin a week from Monday with the following schedule:

• #’s 100-91 (Mon., Aug. 24, 2026)
• #’s 90-81 (Tue., Aug. 25, 2026)
• #’s 80-71 (Wed., Aug. 26, 2026)
• #’s 70-61 (Thu., Aug. 27, 2026)
• #’s 60-51 (Fri., Aug. 28, 2026
• #’s 50-41 (Mon., Aug. 31, 2026)
• #’s 40-31 (Tue., Sept. 1, 2026)
• #’s 30-21 (Wed., Sept. 2, 2026)
• #’s 20-11 (Thu., Sept. 3, 2026)
• #’s 10-1 (Fri., Sept. 4, 2026)

In case you missed it, we also released our schedule for the HOT 100 that will be published in 2027… here’s how that looks:

• 2032 Line Drive HOT 100: Jan. 11 to Jan. 22, 2027
• 2031 Line Drive HOT 100: Mar. 15 to Mar. 26, 2027
• 2030 Line Drive HOT 100: May 10 to May 21, 2027
• 2029 Line Drive HOT 100: Aug. 16 to Aug. 27, 2027
• 2028 Line Drive HOT 100: Oct. 4 to Oct. 15, 2027

3. The Master Commit List (2026-2027)

We continue to update our commit list which as of today’s posting has 3,750 players who’ve indicated where they’ll play at the next level.

Today we added 250 verbals—the most we’ve had over this year—and we expect many more to come in the next few weeks leading up to Sept. 1, at which time the 2028 class can be contacted by college coaches.

We’ll start the commit database all over then and keep up regularly with the 2028’s sharing where they’re headed. Interestingly, we have 15 players in the ’28 class who are already committed!

Here’s one of them: Taryn Gilbert, a catcher/first baseman with Elite Chicago National who has committed to play at Wisconsin Lutheran:

4. The Final Pitch… the Daily Column Produced by Line Drive’s Carlos Arias

One of our most popular regular features, The Final Pitch goes in-depth in the club and high school softball worlds, especially, and offers so much each daily.

Friday’s edition, for example, included the following:

• A spotlight on Kendall Johnson, a standout 2029 1B/OF from Minnesota who plays for Midwest Speed National – Holt
• News & Notes including:
  • A title-winning team, OC Batbusters – Stith/Arduino 12U moving to the West Coast Games org
  • Another team move as the Athletic Mercado 2029 – Christie/Zito team is moving to the Rising Fastpitch program.
• Signings and Commits
  • Two players committed to Missouri State
• The “Hype Song of the Day”

Again, this is a weekday feature and provides a regular look at what top athletes are doing.

5. More Exclusive Content 

As mentioned at the top, we’re on track for our best year ever in terms of growth which means we will be adding to our site in many areas.

Some of these include:

• International: including Canada, as we’ll have more player spotlights, team profiles and event coverage,
• Olympics: more features as we head to the 2028 L.A. Olympic Games (with softball to be played in OKC),
• Pros: adding to our coverage of the AUSL in-season and out,
• College: we’re looking to add a college-focused reporter for 2027,
• Club: Line Drive will be covering additional events all-year round,
• High School: we will increase our coverage of the 5 states that play in the fall and dedicate more resources to our spring softball coverage.

I’ve covered fastpitch softball for a quarter century and, in my opinion, this is the most exciting time I’ve seen in the sport.

There are college and pro games on ESPN, there are outstanding events including nationals to spotlight the top pre-college athletes and, of course, the Women’s College World Series is continuing to flourish.

Even internationally we’re seeing more and more countries invest in softball.

We’ll be doing more and more in the future and hope you’ll be a part of it with us.

As always, share your thoughts and story ideas with me as you have them; my email is: Brentt.Eads@LineDriveMedia.com

Thanks!

Brentt Eads/Executive Editor of Line Drive Media