Fresh from winning the city softball championship in Waite Park, Minn., 14-year-old ace catcher Abby Pekarna has her sights set on winning gold someday in the Olympics.

In a world where there's little opportunity for women athletes beyond college, the Games serve as the ultimate destination for young women like Abby, no matter what sport they play. But unless the International Olympic Committee rethinks its shortsighted 2005 decision to cut softball beginning in 2012, Abby and millions of young softball hopefuls will lose their chance to realize that dream. "They're taking away one of our times to shine," said Pekarna, who is drafting a protest letter to the IOC as she prepares to enter the eighth grade.

As the U.S. softball team rolls toward its fourth gold medal this week, softball fans in Minnesota and across the nation are rightfully rallying to reinstate the sport in 2016. Websites such as savesoftball.com have sprung up. E-mails with links to online petitions and the International Softball Federation, one of the organizations rallying support, are filling the inboxes of players and coaches. "Everybody is doing whatever they can to work to get it back in," said longtime Gophers softball coach Lisa Bernstein.

The stakes are high. In October 2009, IOC delegates will consider whether to reinstate softball for the 2016 Olympics. If they do not, there's a good chance this lousy decision will be permanent.

Grounding the sport makes no sense for many reasons. Let's start with the IOC's headscratching 2005 vote. Amidst grumblings that the U.S. team was too dominant and that softball wasn't a global-enough sport, softball was put to a vote and fell one ballot short of the tally needed to stay in the Olympics.

Meanwhile, delegates voted to keep the modern pentathlon, in which athletes compete in pistol shooting, fencing, equestrian show jumping, swimming and cross-country running. So softball -- a game increasingly popular in Asia and the Americas -- doesn't pass global sport muster. But something that sounds like a test for a 19th-century cavalryman does? Politics, not sportsmanship, drove this vote.

Most troubling, the IOC has long been a strong advocate for women's sports and has worked to include more female athletes at the games. This decision seriously undermines that commitment. Softball, which doesn't require expensive equipment or facilities, is rapidly gaining ground in many areas of the world. Having softball in the Olympic Games provides an international showcase for it, enhancing its credibility and getting more girls involved. As interest grows, softball will become more competitive at the Olympic level, where the U.S. team dominates. These are worthy goals, ones that make much more sense than redlining a sport enjoyed by millions.