A meeting on 1 October between representatives from BSUK and members of the BSF's GB Management Committee has started a process that should lead to a focused programme of fastpitch development in England over the next few years.
The starting point will be an outline plan for fastpitch development that the GB Management Committee (GBMC) drew up in the spring of this year and submitted to BSUK's Development Subcommittee in April, along with ideas contributed by GB Women's Team Head Coach Hayley Scott. A Working Group consisting of BSUK staff, GBMC members, representatives from the fastpitch community and independent advisors will now be set up to write a more complete Fastpitch Development Plan that can become a blueprint for the next decade.
Meanwhile, BSUK and the GBMC have agreed on a number of short-term measures to try to grow participation in fastpitch among both adult and youth players, and to raise the quality of domestic fastpitch play. These measures, in turn, should help fastpitch national team programmes.
Player recruitment
One key element agreed between the GBMC and BSUK is the need to recruit more young girls to the fastpitch format, and the plan to achieve this will focus initially on running after-school or satellite clubs with clusters of schools that are already playing a generic version of baseball/softball. The next stage is to recruit girls from these clubs to participate in a new local league, much like the model used in BSUK's Play Ball! programme.
From this stage, keener and more talented players can be invited to take part in Academy Softball sessions.
However, the meeting agreed that it is crucial to have clubs that can provide an exit route from after-school activity for girls who want to play fastpitch, and support community league play. So BSUK has undertaken to ensure that such clubs are created in appropriate locations, and one of the first will be the Farnham Park Softball and Baseball Club, formerly Chalfont Phoenix Softball Club, which is the new resident club at Farnham Park. The club is intended to become a development hub for fastpitch and baseball as well as slowpitch.
Coaching
Another important element for fastpitch development is coach education, to increase the number and quality of fastpitch coaches in the country.
BSUK has committed to developing a fastpitch-specific Level 2 coaching course over the next 12 months and a Level 3 course in the future. In addition, BSUK will support the provision of technical clinics for fastpitch coaches in Britain over the coming months.
Finally, BSUK will help bring a high-level fastpitch coach to the UK for the summer months in 2015, to support player development by offering additional coaching sessions to members of softball's High Performance Academy, provide clinics and training for coaches and support new fastpitch league programmes.
Academy and HPA
Fastpitch training at BSUK's Academy Softball and High Performance Academy (HPA) is not new, but BSUK is increasing the resources it is putting into these programmes in 2014-15, including the appointment of a new Academy Director in Alan Dean and more commitment to coaching support and curriculum development.
Both were to have kicked off on the weekend of 4-5 October with a joint Academy Softball and Academy Baseball training session on the Saturday and tryouts for High Performance Academies for both sports on Sunday, though the Saturday programme had to be cancelled due to weather.
The number of players taking part in the softball High Performance Academy is likely to increase this year, and the programme will be running throughout the closed season, whereas the first HPA sessions, earlier this year, ran only in the spring. There is a good chance that at least one of the high-level Dutch national team players who helped with the programme last year -- Virginie Anneveld -- will be back to coach at HPA sessions in 2015.
Spreading the word
Unlike slowpitch, which is now played in most parts of the UK, fastpitch currently has pockets of play in the South East, the East Midlands, Norfolk and most recently in Chichester.
Over the next few years, the idea is to develop fastpitch play in additional areas, including Milton Keynes, Manchester and Bristol. Some of this development is likely to be based at new purpose-built facilities.
Great Britain is one of the few softball-playing countries in the world where the ratio between slowpitch and fastpitch play is quite so dominated by slowpitch, and the result is that fastpitch has always had something of a struggle here to survive and grow. This is also one of the reasons why many of GB's six national fastpitch teams have had to use a mix of GB-based and overseas-based passport holders to achieve success on the international stage.
The programmes that BSUK and the GBMC have agreed, and that will be developed further through the creation of a Fastpitch Development Plan, are designed to put fastpitch on a more sustainable footing and to ensure a greater flow of young players into the sport.
