This summer's European Co-ed Slowpitch Super Cup, to be played from 1-6 August in Weiner Neustadt, Austria, will set a record for entries to any European slowpitch competition, with 14 teams taking part from seven different countries.
The previous highest entry for this tournament, now held every two years, was in 2014, when 12 teams took part. Before that, there had been eight teams in 2012, and four, five, six or seven teams in the years from 2007 through 2011, when the competition was held on an annual basis.
The highest-ever entry in a European Slowpitch Championship was eight countries back in 2010.
British teams
The two teams that will represent Great Britain in this year's European Slowpitch Super Cup will be the National Champion Chromies and H2O, who were awarded a place after Pioneers withdraw.
Germany will have three teams in the competition, including the defending champion UCE Travellers, while Belgium, the Czech Republic, Austria and Ireland will have two each and Bulgaria will have one representative.
The original entry had been 15 teams, but the Slovenian team Lisicke, which won the tournament in 2012, withdrew before the deadline on 1 March. Slovenia has been one of the strongest slowpitch countries in Europe in recent years, but the fact that they have no representative in this year's Super Cup, and did not enter last year's European Championships, is the one negative factor in a story that suggests that slowpitch is continuing to grow in popularity on the Continent.
Stiff competition
While the GB Slowpitch Team has carried all before it in European Slowpitch Championships, winning on all 10 occasions the competition has been held, British success in what was called the European Slowpitch Cup and is now the European Slowpitch Super Cup -- meaning that more than one team from a country can enter -- has been more patchy.
The last British team to win the competition was Chromies in 2011, and a British team has only won gold on four of the seven occasions the tournament has been played. Chromies have won on three of those occasions, including the inaugural European Slowpitch Cup in 2007 in France, and Baker Tomkins won in Bulgaria in 2008.
The three non-British winners have been Dodder Dynamoes from Ireland in 2009 in Bulgaria, Lisicke from Slovenia in 2012 in the Czech Republic and UCE Travellers from Germany in 2014, also in the Czech Republic.
Full line-up
The full list of teams taking part in this year's Slowpitch Super Cup will be:
UCE Travellers (Germany)
Chromies (GB)
H2O (GB)
Diving Ducks (Austria)
Linz (Austria)
Afterburners (Belgium)
Titans BSC (Belgium)
DNAce (Czech Republic)
Sparks Mlade Buky (Czech Republic)
Akademics Sofia (Bulgaria)
Mannheim Tornadoes (Germany)
Triple Play (Germany)
Oddsox (Ireland)
TNT (Ireland)
Daily reports from the 2016 European Co-ed Slowpitch Super Cup will be posted on this website.