By Bob Fromer
“This is always one of my favourite days of the year,” said GB Slowpitch Team Head Coach Steve Patterson, “and I’ve learned so much about my players today.”
Steve was talking near the end of a long and exhausting day at Farnham Park on Saturday 18 April known as the GB Challenge Tournament, an event that happens every couple of years when a European Slowpitch Championship is on the horizon.
Having recently selected 43 players for the national team squad after a winter of indoor training and trials, this was when those players got to come outdoors and play for the 18 places available in the team that will compete in the Europeans this summer in Dupnitsa, Bulgaria, trying to win a 10th straight European title.
Thirty-two of those 43 players were at Farnham Park for the Challenge Tournament on a brilliantly sunny but cold day, with a relentless easterly wind sweeping across the ground, turning one pitch into Home Run City while the main pitch, with the wind blowing straight in, was vulnerable only to the strongest of sluggers.
The GB players, along with a few guest players to help fill some holes, were divided into three teams – Red, White and Blue – and the tournament was completed by a Challenger team, made up of top National Softball League players, mainly from Pioneers and Blue Steel.
The four teams played a round-robin, then 1 v 4 and 2 v 3 semi-finals, then a final and a third-place game, with Team Manager and Assistant Coach Sara Vertigan handling the White Team, Assistant Coach Mike Ashley taking Red and GB veteran Lucy Binding looking after Blue. Meanwhile, Steve Patterson roamed from game to game throughout the day, watching, talking to the coaches and occasionally talking to players.
Then Steve let eight or ten players – mostly Main Squad veterans – go, but asked the remaining players to give him another four-inning scrimmage game so he could have a final look at some things he wanted to see.
It was an exhausting day, mentally and physically, for players whose softball has mostly been indoors over the winter for two or three hours at a time, with no tough bounces, no wind and no sun to deal with – and of course with the added pressure of playing for places.
“I haven’t forgotten how to play this game – I really haven’t!”, one player said to Steve towards the end of the day after some uncharacteristic struggles on the pitch. “I know,” Steve said. What else could he say?
Pressure
The GB Challenge Tournament isn’t the only basis for selecting players for the European Championships, but it is an important final test, and the players know that.
“Play hard, enjoy it, and smile,” Steve had told them before the games started. “If you’re smiling, you’ll play better.” But the pressure was always there throughout the day, especially with a number of players being asked to play a number of positions, and some players couldn’t resist giving a nervous glance towards the sidelines to see whether Steve had been watching their game instead of the game on the other pitch when they popped up to shortstop with runners on base or a ground ball went through their legs.
Of course, there were a few players out there who know they will be selected for Bulgaria, and maybe a few players who were thinking their chances are pretty slim. But in Steve Patterson’s GB Slowpitch Team, Development Squad players and even Development Squad rookies (nine players have just been selected to the squad for the first time) can earn places on performance and merit, sometimes displacing veterans, so the majority of those 32 players at Farnham Park for the Challenge Tournament could be said to have been on the bubble.
And it won’t be long before the bubble bursts – selections for Bulgaria will be made and announced before the first Diamond Series tournament on 9-10 May.
Red, White and Blue
Here’s how the GB players were divided up, with one player, veteran Kirstie Leach, playing for a couple of teams over the course of the day:
RED
Baljit Ahluwalia
Vicky Chapman
Emily Clifford
Stephanie Gillard
Roger Grooms (P)
Andy Grose
Danny Gunn
Liz Keaveney
Aaron Thomas
Matt Tomlin
Chris Yoxall
WHITE
Stewart Butcher
Lauren Futcher
Brad Gilmour (P)
Katherine Golik
Kelvin Harrison
Adam Haywood
Kim Hendry
Kirstie Leach
Dan Spinks (P)
Ben Taylor
Duncan Waugh
Natalie Woolley
BLUE
Areej Elmaazi
Steve Hazard
Roddy Hill
Sherry Kenyon
Ian Kulka
David Lee (P)
Mike MacDowell
David Piesse
Claudine Snape
+ guest players
Results
Before play began, in the clear, cold morning light, while waiting for final words from the coaching staff, all three teams formed a bonding circle in centre field on the pitch nearest the baseball field, because the GB Slowpitch Squad is above all else a tight-knit unit.
When play began, it was the White Team that shot out of the gate, giving up a 7-6 lead to a Red Team that scored five runs in the top of the seventh inning, only to come back with six runs in the bottom half to win an exciting game 13-11. The winning hit was a three-run inside-the-park home run by Stewart Butcher.
The Whites followed that up with a 13-5 win over Team Blue.
Meanwhile, both Blue and Red had racked up wins over a slow-starting Challenger team.
But then things began to change. In the final round-robin games, White lost to the Challengers while Red beat Blue to produce this round-robin table:
White (2-1)
Red (2-1)
Blue (1-2)
Challengers (1-2)
On to semi-finals, where Red held off a late rally by Blue to win 14-13 while the Challengers just scraped past White by 10-9. The softball was getting very competitive indeed.
White beat Blue 12-7 in the third place game while the Challengers and Red contested the final on the diamond where the wind was blowing in. As a result, this was a game featuring mostly good defense that could have gone either way.
Red took a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning on an RBI single by Liz Keaveney, who hit the ball sharply most of the day, and a fly ball off the bat of Aaron Thomas that Challenger left fielder Steve Rice lost in the difficult sun.
The Challengers took the lead with three runs in the top of the third inning, featuring triples by Gary Hoxby and Moe Flett, and extended their lead to 5-2 in the fifth on another triple by Moe Flett and a single by Amy Rice.
But the Red Team scored a decisive four runs in the bottom of the fifth inning. Three straight singles by Baljit Ahluwalia, Emily Clifford and Roger Grooms got things started, and these were followed by a line drive double by Danny Gunn, a bad throw from the outfield and a sacrifice fly off the bat of Liz Keaveney.
The Reds added a final run in the bottom of the sixth courtesy of two newly-selected rookies. Aaron Thomas, who was impressive all day at bat and in the field if occasionally a little impulsive on the bases, stroked a double down the third base line, moved to third on a groundout and scored on a single to left by Baljit Ahluwalia.
A leadoff single in the top of the seventh by Challenger Gary Hoxby was followed by three straight outs, and the Red Team players had the satisfaction of knowing that their play throughout the day had won the competition.
And then the anti-climax – another few innings in the cold wind for 20-odd players so Steve Patterson could have one last look, and another test of mental resolve. Chris Yoxall, at least, took this last chance to impress the coaches with two home runs (however wind-assisted) that soared over the fence in left field.
Exhilarating
There is a good reason why the GB Challenge Tournament is one of Steve Patterson’s favourite days. It’s exhausting but exhilarating, posing an extreme test for many of the players, showing off the strength and unity of the GB Slowpitch programme as a whole but also the strengths and weaknesses of every player.
This year’s European Championships will be contested by seven teams, but Slovenia, the team that has come closest to challenging GB in recent years, has pulled out of the tournament. Their key women players are going to the Women’s Fastpitch Championships in Holland the week before the Slowpitch Europeans and can’t afford the time and money to do both.
So a bit of edge has been taken off the tournament, and though there could be a decent challenge from Germany (a German team beat Chromies and H2O to win the European Slowpitch Cup last summer), there may be a feeling in some quarters that whoever is selected for GB, the team is bound to win the Europeans for the tenth straight time.
But this is not how Steve Patterson and his coaches will be thinking, and it’s not how the players will be thinking as they wait over the next week or two to see who is going to Bulgaria and who isn’t.
With so many players challenging for places, selection is still an honour and representing Great Britain abroad is still something that every single player wants to do.