LORAIN — A lot has changed since these 22 Lorain residents were last in grade school.

But there’s one thing that hasn’t: Kickball is still the most fun part of the day.

The men and women who make up Lorain County’s adult kickball team, the Sharks, went undefeated this past summer and won in a one-game tournament Oct. 27, making them the first champions in the county’s first, as of yet nameless, adult kickball league.

What began as a way for groups of friends to blow off some steam and have some fun this past summer has become so popular that the league will be forced to go to a multiple-round bracket system for next year’s tournament to handle its growth from six to an expected 16 teams.

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Why so much love for a game that most of the players haven’t touched since the days of bad lunches and thinking girls had cooties?

“I just think it brings you back to your childhood,” said league coordinator Jen Londo. “That’s the biggest response I get. They get to play like they were in elementary school and get to remember how fun elementary school was.”

Londo is a county native but lived in Virginia Beach for 15 years where she participated in a wildly popular kickball league there. She moved back to Lorain three years ago and joined the Hermes kickball league in Cleveland last year, but quickly had dreams of bringing a league closer to home.

“There were so many of us from Lorain that I thought, ‘Why don’t we form our own league,’” she said.

Games are played at Oakwood Park. There were so few teams this year that Lorain Parks and Recreation did not make them pay to use the baseball fields, but Londo said she expects that to change next year. Fees from each team will be raised from $125 to $250 next year, a portion of which will go to the end of the season party, which this year was held Friday and featured food, a keg of beer and good times.

“We’re really here to have fun and it has been so much fun,” Londo said.

Teams can sign up for next season, and lest anyone be worried about not being as agile, and perhaps trim, as the days when Santa Claus was still a very real part of life, it’s not as important as you might think, according to the general manager of the championship Sharks team.

“I think the draw is that it’s a recreational sport for adults that’s not real physically demanding - you’re not expected to be a superstar to win,” said Andrea Miceli, 41. “Some of the less athletic people on our team were scoring for us and because of that they felt more welcomed.”

The age range for the Sharks was between 20 and mid-50s, and the team even had two special needs players.

“We had teachers, adults, parents, single parents - we had a lot of different people coming together, and I think that is part of the reason why we won,” she said.

The Sharks defeated Londo’s St. Lad’s team 6-1 in the championship game to win it all last year. Despite the increased competition for next summer, Miceli had one message for those who want to sign up.

“The Sharks are going to take it all again,” Miceli said.

To try and prove Miceli wrong and join the league contact Londo at (440) 714-1538. The minimum age is 18 and teams have to have at least three women in play at all times.

Contact Adam Wright at 329-7155 or awright@chroniclet.com.

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