Softball Roster Template

Thirteen rows come pre-filled. The battery takes the first four lines, two pitchers and two catchers. The other seven fielding spots get one line each, and two UTIL lines at the bottom hold your swing players. Every cell is editable, header cells included. Grow the sheet to 25 rows if your program runs deep, or delete the lines you never use.

What Each Column Holds

• Pos: letter codes P, C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, LF, CF, and RF, with a second position after a slash, so SS/P reads as shortstop first and pitcher second. Write each position the same way in every row, or a filter for SS misses the player you entered as Short. Letters sort alphabetically (1B, 2B, 3B, C, CF), so use scorebook digits 1 to 9 if you want a spreadsheet sort to follow the diamond.
• Slap: a Y for anyone who slaps from the left side of the plate, blank for everyone else. The slapper section further down explains why it earns a full column.
• Role: DP, FLEX, or CR. The first two mark the pair you usually start with. CR marks the bench players quick enough to run for your pitcher or catcher. All three can change before any first pitch, so pencil them in on a printed copy.
• Age Group: the division each player is registered in, such as 10U, 12U, or 14U. It is the cell you check first when a younger player is called up for a weekend or two teams share a pitcher.

USA Softball's Rule 4, Section 3 lets a designated player (DP) bat for any one fielder if the coach declares it before the game starts. The fielder being batted for is the FLEX. That player takes the tenth spot (the final spot in Junior Olympic play) and starts on defense only. Ten players, nine bats.

The table follows the pair from the pregame announcement through the main moves after first pitch, plus the Junior Olympic Extra Player option, each with its section in the Rule column. Pinch-hitting or pinch-running for the DP, and subbing for the FLEX, follow the same section (4-3D and 4-3F).

Watch rows four and five. The DP fielding for the FLEX takes the FLEX out of the game. The DP fielding for anyone else takes nobody out.

Those section letters are USA Softball's. High school softball is played from the NFHS softball rules book(opens in new tab), so check the book your event names before you settle a call, and write it in the Sanctioning Body field of the roster header.

Why the Pair Changes How Many Players You Carry

A team that runs DP/FLEX needs ten healthy starters before anyone sits. A Junior Olympic team that adds one Extra Player on top of DP/FLEX puts 11 on the card with 10 batting, and in JO pool play you may bat as many as your whole roster (Rule 4, Section 1C). The courtesy runner rule in the next section decides how many more you carry.

What the Plate Umpire Checks on the Card

The roster and the lineup card are different documents that share three fields. Under Rule 4, Section 1, the line-up lists each starter's first and last name, defensive position, and uniform number, and the available substitutes go on it by name and number. A roster that already holds those fields turns the card into copying. The card then adds only what changes every game: the batting order, who is the DP, and who sits tenth.

The same section forgives two common slips. A wrong number on the line-up is corrected with no penalty, and an eligible roster member can be added to the substitute list at any point in the game. For the game-day card itself, the custom lineup card builder has a softball layout with the DP and FLEX lines already drawn.

Fastpitch lets you run for your pitcher and your catcher without charging a substitution. Rule 8, Section 10 of the USA Softball rulebook allows a courtesy runner for either one, as long as they batted for themselves and reached base safely. Neither player has to leave the game. Your battery stays on the field and off the basepaths.

The roster consequence hides in the eligibility clauses. The same courtesy runner may not run for both the pitcher and the catcher at any point in the game, so the job takes two different players. A player who is in the game, or has taken part in it in any capacity, is not eligible either. Junior Olympic pool play drops that second clause, so a player who has already played can run (Rule 8, Section 10C, and Rules Supplement 12A). The same runner still cannot run for both the pitcher and the catcher.

Read the floor as the smallest roster that still lets you run for both your pitcher and your catcher. It leaves nobody for an injury, a pinch hitter, or a player who misses the weekend. The ceiling comes from your league or tournament, so check the event packet before you settle on a number.

One more clause bites when your pitcher is the FLEX. If the DP bats for the pitcher or catcher and reaches base, no courtesy runner may run for the DP.

Re-Entry Makes the Bench Two-Way

Rule 4, Section 5 lets any player be substituted for and re-enter once, provided they return to the same spot in the batting order. A starter and the player who replaced them cannot share the line-up. A second re-entry, or one into a different batting spot, is an illegal re-entry, and the illegal player is disqualified.

For your roster, that means a pulled starter is not gone for the day. A defensive sub in the fourth inning can hand the spot back in the sixth. Note the batting slot on the card whenever you pull someone, because the return has to land exactly there.

Slapping is a fastpitch weapon that shapes both your batting order and your bench, so it gets a column of its own. B/T stays as two letters, bat hand first, so L/R bats left and throws right. The Slap cell tells you which of those left-side batters run as they hit.

A slapper starts moving toward the pitcher as the ball is released and hits it into the ground on the run. Judi Garman and Michelle Gromacki describe the edge in Softball Skills & Drills(opens in new tab). The left-handed batter is already several steps closer to first, and the running start forces the defense to make the play quickly. They also name what the batter needs to make it work, good speed and the ability to put a ball into play.

Speed and contact hold steady from game to game. That makes a slap a season fact, worth one entry in the preseason. It feeds your Role column too. A fast slapper on the bench is the first name to consider when you need a courtesy runner who has not played yet.

If you want to grow the column, the softball hitting drills include slap work with coaching cues for each drill. A single player's slap notes, pitches, and primary and secondary positions fit better on a softball player profile than on a team sheet.

Little League draws the line plainly. Its baseball pitchers are governed by a pitch count, while Little League Softball games are tied to the number of innings thrown. Under that rule one pitch in an inning counts as having pitched it, so a windmill arm who comes in to get one out has spent a full inning of the day.

Sizing the Pitching Staff for a Weekend

None of these rulebooks hands you a staff size. Work it from your schedule. Little League's numbers cover its own regular season, so for a travel tournament or a high school game, write the daily limit that event's rules set in the log's Daily Max field first. Then count Saturday's games, multiply by the innings a game runs in your division, and set the total against one arm's daily limit. Anything above it needs a second pitcher before a single bad outing.

Under Little League's rules, a Minors or Majors pitcher tops out at 12 innings a day, and seven or more on Saturday rules that pitcher out for Sunday, while six carries no rest day.

The sheet starts with two P rows because one arm covers a day only up to its limit and leaves nothing behind it on a bad day. A third player who can throw strikes, written as a slash position like 1B/P, costs you nothing to list. Fill in the log below as the weekend goes, one row per arm.

Building the arms behind those rows is a practice question. The softball pitching drills lay out windmill drills by level and a weekly routine built on four pitching days.

Decide where the finished roster is going, then take the matching route below. Every route starts on this page, and none of them asks you to sign up.

• Excel or Google Sheets: Copy as Table, under each fill-in sheet, copies what you typed as tab-separated rows. Click the first cell of an empty sheet and paste, and every column lands in its own column.
• Word: paste the same copy into a document, select it, and use Word's Convert Text to Table with tabs as the separator.
• PDF: Print Form sends just that one sheet to the printer. Choose Save as PDF in the printer list and you have a file to email to the tournament director.
• Image: Download as Image saves a PNG for the team group chat or a dugout binder.

The page keeps nothing between visits. Copy, print, or save what you typed before you close the tab, or you will be filling in thirteen rows again next week.

A printed roster is accurate on the day you print it. By the second tournament your opening DP has earned an everyday glove at third, a new DP/FLEX pair fills the gap, and your second pitcher has become the one you start on Saturdays. The sheet shows none of that until you reprint it.

Striveon keeps the current version. Paste the names from the Player column into its import, one per line and without the header row, or bring the spreadsheet itself as an Excel or CSV file. A name column is enough, and you can add a birth date column if you want birth dates on the athletes. You then set each athlete's position and jersey number, and their record shows the current values. Each game you log (a Match event in the calendar) keeps its own lineup, with starters, bench, batting order, and every player's fielding position for that game.

When your organization's sport is softball, the position picker offers the same letter codes as this sheet, plus DP and FLEX. Each team's default lineup carries a Lineup style setting, Traditional 9-player or DP/FLEX 10-player, and the DP/FLEX style adds a tenth line to the lineup for the FLEX. The lineup records who plays where. Applying the substitution rules from the DP/FLEX table stays with you and the umpire. B/T, Slap, and Role stay on this sheet.