Our History

Softball arrived in Gezer in the late 1970s. The kibbutz was one of the first places in Israel to field a team, and one of the first to have a diamond of its own. The field put itself on the map by hosting three consecutive Maccabiah Games — 1989, 1993 and 1997 — welcoming ballplayers from abroad. After the 1997 season, though, there were no longer enough adult players, and the squad folded. The younger players scattered to other clubs, among them the Jerusalem Veterans, ZionTours, which took several championships through the early 2000s while more and more Gezer players found their way into that dugout.

In spring 2009 the managers stepped down and handed the team to its youngest members — Gezer residents, past and present. They named it Gezer09, for the reunion of Gezer players from every team in the league. In its very first season the club reached the final and led 9–0 in the decisive third game, before Dimona answered with ten late runs to win 10–9. In fall 2010 the name Gezer09 became official — and the club won that fall title, then the spring championship of 2011. More spring championships followed in 2012, 2014 and 2015, along with a long shelf of fall tournament cups.

The club's kids programs began in September 2015 with a youth team, and a year later a teens team. They kept growing: teams for grades 1–3 and for grades 4–6 joined in September 2020, and in September 2025 the club fielded a girls' team for the first time. Today five teams train at Kibbutz Gezer, from grade 1 through grade 12.

Along the way the field itself kept making history: the Maccabiah Games came back to Gezer — hosted again in 2017, in 2022 and in 2026 — and in October 2019 the kibbutz diamond hosted the WBSC U-18 Men's Softball European Qualifier, with national teams from across Europe playing on it. In June 2025 the Cadets team won the IAB Finals.