By Bob Fromer
The annual GB Challenge Tournament – one of Head Coach Stephen Patterson’s favourite days of the year – took place on Saturday 16 April at Farnham Park as 38 players from the GB Slowpitch pool played to convince the coaches that they’re ready for selection.
Normally, this annual mid-April event, where three teams made up of GB Slowpitch pool players and one “Challenger” team play out a tournament so that the GB players can show off their skills and game awareness, has been favoured by good weather. This time, the event was played on a brutally cold day, where overnight rain had left water on the infields and in some of the dugouts, and mud everywhere else. But the players put on as many clothes as they dared and soldiered on for close to nine hours, hands frozen and teeth chattering.
GB Assistant Coaches ran the GB Red, White and Blue teams, leaving Stephen Patterson free to wander from pitch to pitch and collect the impressions that will play an important role – though it won’t be the only factor – when selections are made for the team’s next official competition. Most likely, in a non-European Championship year, this will be the WBSC Slowpitch World Cup or maybe World Championship that is supposed to happen this coming November in Florida.
The “challenger” who provided the fourth team in the GB Challenge tournament was a largely American-based team made up of players from the USA and Team Murica entries in last year’s Softball World Series, assembled at relatively short notice by Kevin Quiney.
BASU umpires on the day, who did a sterling job in the cold during almost continuous play, were Darrell Pitman and Ian Tomlin.
The teams
“This may have been one of our more successful off-seasons,” Stephen Patterson had said in the week before the GB Challenge, “with a great series of open trials, 11 new selections and regular training sessions. We managed to find a host of new venues willing to support the GB Slowpitch programme, and it was great fun to get back up North again for training, with a session in Stockport, as well as using venues in and around outer London.”
The full GB Slowpitch Team player pool numbers over 40 players, and most of them were there for the GB Challenge, apart from a few missing veterans otherwise engaged or injured. Particularly in evidence, and scattered among the three GB teams, were those 11 new selections who were recently added following winter trials. (http://www.britishsoftball.org/news/view/gb-slowpitch-team-adds-11-new-trialists).
The GB teams were:
GB Red
James Cavalier
Roger Grooms
Kelvin Harrison
Rob Mosley
Ben Taylor
Aaron Thomas
Matt Tomlin
Jenny Ball
Michelle Collier
Areej Elmaazi
Kat Golik
Ann Whicher
Coach: Mike Ashley
GB White
Matt Burnett
Stewart Butcher
Lee Cornwall
Kris Hadwin
Adam Haywood
Steve Hazard
Manny Santos
Ed Watkinson
Lilly Chinn
Emily Clifford
Lauren Futcher
Sherry Kenyon
Kim Miller (guest player)
Hannah Pitman
Coach: Robbie Robison
GB Blue
David Grey
Danny Gunn
Roddy Hill
David Lee
Mike MacDowell
Daniel Patterson
Neil Sylvester
Mike Williams
Steph Gillard
Kim Hendry
Kirstie Leach
Claudine Snape
Amy Wells
Coaches: Lucy Binding, David Lee and Team Manager Kellie Whitaker
The teams were designed to be as even as possible to ensure tough competition on the day, but each team had its own character and characteristics. Before play began, Stephen Patterson told the group that “one of the objectives of the day is going to be to put you in situations you might not be comfortable with – maybe playing out of position, or being asked to do something you normally wouldn’t do – so we can see how you react.
“Communication is the key,” Stephen added, “and that’s what we’re going to be looking for. When you go away on tour, you have to become a functioning team in a short period of time, and communication is what makes that happen. The teams that do that best today will get to the final.”
The games
A six-game round robin played by the three GB teams and the Challengers started shortly after 10.00 am and finished just before 2.00 pm, when the teams took a short break for lunch. There were some close games and a few blowouts and a particularly mad affair between GB Red and GB Blue.
GB Red started out by scoring 13 runs in the top of the first inning on 11 hits, a walk and three errors, including a double by Ben Taylor and triples by Roger Grooms and James Cavalier, and you would have thought that might have settled the contest.
But in standard fashion, GB Blue were exhorted not to give up by their coaches, and they didn’t. While holding GB Red scoreless for the next two innings, the Blues scored two runs in the bottom of the first inning, six in the second and then nine in the third, including doubles by Mike MacDowell and Kim Hendry, who hit the ball hard all day. Suddenly, the Blue team had a 17-13 lead.
Four runs by GB Red in the top of the fourth inning tied the score at 17-all, and when GB Blue went down in order in the bottom of the inning, the coaches decided that a tie-breaker inning would be played. Starting with a runner on second base, GB Red scored four times, with a triple by Aaron Thomas and a home run by Michelle Collier the key blows. GB Blue came back with much of the same – a home run by Roddy Hill and a triple by Steph Gillard. But they could only manage three runs, and the win ensured that GB Red finished top of the pool – but only on run difference – from GB White.
Pool standings – with third and fourth place also decided on run difference – were:
GB Red (2-1)
GB White (2-1)
GB Blue (1-2)
Challengers (1-2)
In the semi-finals, GB Red beat the Challengers 7-2 in the only game of the day dominated by defense, and GB Blue scored six runs in the final inning, three of them on a home run by David Grey, to pull away from GB White and win by 17-8.
So it was GB Red v GB Blue in the final.
The final
Anyone expecting a repeat of the earlier 21-20 “extra inning” encounter between these two teams was in for disappointment.
The game started cautiously, with each team scoring once in the first inning and twice in the second, and GB Blue scored two more in the top of the third on a two-RBI single by veteran David Lee to take a 5-3 lead.
Then came the bottom of the third -- one of those half innings that can occasionally happen in slowpitch softball, no matter how good the players might be. Fifteen GB Red batters came to the plate (and all of them scored) before GB Blue could record a single out, and the final tally in the inning was 16. Long before the inning was over, GB Blue heads had dropped. Two more innings were played, but a final two runs by GB Red in the bottom of the fifth brought the mercy of a mercy rule ending, with the score standing at 22-6.
Afterward, around 5.00 pm, with a warm sun having finally broken through to counter the worst of the chill, Stephen Patterson thanked the GB players for a great day and the Challengers for a valiant and helpful effort -- and then asked a bunch of the GB players to stay behind to play another few innings so he could look at a some specifics. It would be hard to argue that this is a random selection process!
GB Festival
In a way, the GB Challenge Day is really the annual festival of Great Britain Slowpitch Softball, for the team will rarely get 38 players to an individual practice or trial, and when GB sides go to play abroad, or the Development Team gets together to play in the Softball World Series, it’s a maximum of 18 players on the squad.
What this really means, despite the great camaraderie in the GB Slowpitch programme, is that the GB Challenge Tournament is a fiercely competitive event, because fewer than half the players in the pool are going to get selected for the main international competition of the year.
Some of the veteran “Main Squad” players, with plenty of medals in their cupboards, eased their way through a day when conditions made it hard to play aggressive softball. Meanwhile, it was the players who have joined the pool over the past two or three years who were trying hardest to make an impact.
Offense has always been the strong point of GB Teams in winning 10 straight European Championships, and almost all of the 38 players wearing red, white or blue shirts hit the ball hard throughout the day. Conditions weren’t great for pitchers, with a few too many walks issued, and on the day, it looked like the GB coaches have some work to do on defense, particularly with getting outfielders to turn properly and track balls hit over their heads and getting left-side infielders to make consistently accurate throws to first base.
Newcomers David Grey and Hannah Pitman, both recently-selected trialists, impressed with their power. Michelle Collier, who joined the programme last year and went to the Slowpitch World Cup in Florida last November as a rookie, hit the ball very hard, and another player selected last year, Aaron Thomas, never stops hustling. Areej Elmaazi, almost a veteran now, made some fine catches down the right field line, while another new selection, Dan Patterson, hit a bunch of hard line drives. Veterans Kirstie Leach and Kim Hendry churned out line drive singles throughout the day. These are all good players, the best that the British part of British softball has to offer, and everyone had their moments.
Now the GB coaches have to sort it all out and make what George Osborne likes to call “hard decisions”. We’ll find out what those are in due course as we wait for word on whether the WBSC Softball Division will run a World Cup or World Championship this year, and if so, when and where it might be.
GB Slowpitch Open
The day after the Challenge Tournament, on Sunday 17 April, players and coaches from the GB Slowpitch programme ran the annual GB Slowpitch Open, a fundraiser that provides a fun tournament and coaching for recreational teams.
Here are some pictures from the day, including the presentation to the Tournament MVP Mark Saunders, the winning team and the m ale and female Home Run Derby winners.
