Every year high school softball coaches in Class I and Class L say the same thing. Memorial Field in Concord is not a women’s softball venue, it’s a men’s slow pitch softball field.

With it’s distant fences and the physical impossibility of a high school girls actually hitting it over those fences, potential home runs at other field become long outs. Conversely, balls hit into the gaps, for fast players, can easily turn into home runs.

Proponents have suggested moving the tournament to a real women’s softball field, like the centrally located ones at St. Anselm College and Southern New Hampshire University.

The only good news this year? With the new format of playing quarterfinals games at the home of the higher seeds, only the final two rounds in Class L and Class I will be played in Concord. Plymouth State University, the site of the Class M and Class S semifinals and finals, is a much better venue for girls softball.

As for baseball, they get to play at places like Merchantsauto.com Stadium, Holman Stadium, and Franklin Pierce College. But in Class L and Class I softball, change is long overdue.