Four GB Softball teams will be leaving the UK over the next couple of weeks for European and World Championship tournaments in a year in which every GB national team will be in official ESF or ISF competition – the first time that has ever happened.
First to leave will be the GB Junior (Under-19) Women's Fastpitch Team, who will head for Brampton, Ontario, Canada on 27 June to play for the very first time in the ISF Junior Women's World Championships.
They will be followed on 4 July by the GB Women's Fastpitch Team, who will have a training camp in the UK from 28 June-July 4, then fly to Prague for European Championships that will double as a World Championship Qualifier.
A day or so later, the GB Junior (Under-19) Men's Fastpitch Team will head to Stenlose in Denmark for the European Junior Men's Championships, and on 15 July, the GB Slowpitch Team will travel to Pardubice in the Czech Republic to try to win their ninth straight European Championship.
One GB Team has already had their competition – the GB Men's Fastpitch Team, which finished in ninth place in the ISF Men's Fastpitch World Championships in Auckland, New Zealand in March.
The final three teams to play this year will be the GB Under-16 Girls' Fastpitch Team, who will compete in European Championships in Ostrava in the Czech Republic from August 5-10, and the GB Under-13 Girls' Fastpitch Team and their Development Team, the London Cubs, who will play in the ESF's Massimo Romeo Youth Cup in Collechio, Italy from August 14-17.
Here are more details and GB rosters for the upcoming events.
GB Junior Women
When half of the players and all the staff on the Great Britain Junior (Under-19) Women's Fastpitch Softball Team fly out of Heathrow Airport in London on June 27, headed for Toronto and then for Brampton, Ontario, it will be an adventure into the unknown.
That's because it will be the first time that Britain's Junior softballers have ever played at a World Championship level when they pit themselves against 15 of the world's best teams at the tenth ISF Junior World Championships in Brampton from July 1-7.
The other half of the playing squad? They'll be flying in to Toronto on that same day from all around the world.
Because softball is a small minority sport in the UK, and most British participants play slowpitch, Great Britain fastpitch teams have only a tiny player pool to choose from.
But thanks to the echoes of the British Empire, there are of course a large number of Britons living in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and GB national fastpitch teams since the late 1990s, at least in the upper age groups, have always been a mixture of GB-based players and players based overseas whose ancestry (normally a British parent) gives them passport eligibility.
This approach has seen the Great Britain Senior Women's Team finish second and third in the last two European Championships, and the team has played in the last three World Championships in Beijing, Caracas and Whitehorse, earning a world ranking of #11 along the way.
The GB Junior Team that will play in Brampton will be split 50:50, with seven players who have grown up and live in Britain, and seven players who have grown up overseas, including three from the United States, two from Australia and one each from Canada and New Zealand.
The GB Juniors have been playing in European Championships for the past 15 years and lately have been rising in the European rankings, moving from 13th in 2008 to ninth in 2010 and sixth in 2012, so the team is clearly on the up. That sixth place finish last year would not normally have qualified GB for the World Championships, but the International Softball Federation has now made the Junior World Championships an open-entry tournament, and the GB Management Committee decided to seize the opportunity to give the Juniors a taste of play at the highest levels.
And the GB Team will get that taste straight away, as they play both the United States and Canada on the first day of the tournament!
All games from the Junior World Championships will be webstreamed, and a subscription that will allow you to watch all games live or later on demand costs only $10 Canadian (about £6.50). To subscribe, or to follow play-by-play from all the GB Junior games for free, go to www.jwwc2013.com.
The full squad is:
Emma Bridge (Australia)
Hannah Cook (New Zealand)
Lauren Evans (USA)
Lucy Hall (GB)
Amie Hutchison (GB)
Amanda Marshall (USA)
Tahli Moore (Australia)
Nicole Ratel (Canada)
Jodie Rushin (GB)
Amy Trask (GB)
Keeli Waugh (USA)
Amy Wells (GB)
Charlotte Wells (GB)
Chloe Wigington (GB)
GB Women
The GB Women's Team, currently ranked third in Europe and 11th in the world, will play in the European Women's Championships from July 7-13 in Prague. Nineteen teams will take part, and the GB Women are the top seed in the toughest of the four pool groups that also includes Russia and Germany.
At stake is qualification for the 2014 ISF World Championships, scheduled for Haarlem in the Netherlands in August 2014 – the first time the World Championships will ever have been played on European soil. To qualify, GB will have to have to finish no lower than fourth place.
This will be the first ESF or ISF competition since 2005 in which the GB Women have not been able to rely on pitcher Stacie Townsend, who retired after the World Championships last year , along with several other veteran players who have helped GB make a real mark on the world stage over the past half-decade have also called it a day.
So Head Coach Hayley Scott will be relying on a younger team, and especially on young pitchers Carling Hare and Keeli Waugh, along with veteran London Angels pitcher Kylie Marshall, to make it back to the World Championships.
The full squad includes three players – pitcher Keeli Waugh, catcher Nicole Ratel and infielder Amy Wells – who will be flying to Prague directly from the Junior World Championships in Canada):
Pitchers
Carling Hare (Canada)
Kylie Marshall (GB)
Keeli Waugh (USA)
Catchers
Amy Moore (USA)
Steph Pearc (GB)
Nicole Ratel (Canada)
Infielders
Jenny Ball (GB)
Sarah Craig (USA)
Sarah Jones (GB
Chiya Louie (GB)
Amy Wells (GB)
Alicja Wolny (USA)
Outfielders
Susie Hall (GB)
Karlene Headley-Cooper (Canada)
Naomi Jones (Australia)
Laura Thompson (GB)
Kori Waugh (USA)
GB Junior Men
During the same week that the GB Women will be in Prague, the GB Junior (Under-19) Men's Team will be in Stenlose, Denmark, looking to go at least one better than their fourth place finish two years ago in the European Junior Men's Championships.
New Head Coach Pat Weightman will have some veterans from that 2011 tournament, which marked the first time the GB Junior Men had competed in Europe since 2004. After 2004, the programme had gone into abeyance until revived by current GB Softball Programmes Director Stan Doney in 2010. Now, the GB Junior Men's Team has already begun feeding players into the senior GB Men's Team.
The team will also include a number of players getting their first experience of a European Championship, including four players from the Monmouth Rockets, a school-based team in South Wales that formed in 2012.
The full squad is:
Amit Aswani
George Blaskett
Jack Broddle
Damon Brown
Callum Church
Ben Easdown
Ieuan Gale
Sam Grafton
Robert Mosle (Monmouth Rockets)
Thomas Price
Joshua Saunders
Carl Sharpe
Matthew Tomlin
GB Slowpitch Team
The GB Co-ed Slowpitch Team will travel to Pardubice in the Czech Republic, 50 miles east of Prague, for the ninth European Slowpitch Championships from July 17-20.
GB has won the previous eight, but last summer Pardubice was the venue when a team that was not from Britain or Ireland won a European slowpitch competition for the first and only time, as Lisicke from Slovenia defeated the British champion Chromies in the European Slowpitch Cup.
GB Head Coach Steve Patterson has been in post for a year and in the GB programme for 10 years, but will be leading the team to a European Championship for the first time. Steve is well aware of the challenge Slovenia might pose, and will be looking for a blend of speed, power, youth and experience from the following squad:
Women
Jenny Ball
Lucy Binding
Vicky Chapman
Emily Clifford
Nicola Duerden
Areej Elmaazi
Chiya Louie
Ruth Macintosh
Men
Lee Cornwall
Brett Gibbens
Paul Gough
Roger Grooms
Danny Gunn
Steve Hazard
Ian Kulka
David Lee
Dan Spinks
Ben Taylor
Follow the GB Teams
All games from all competitions involving GB Teams this summer will be covered with daily reports and updates on the BSF website (www.britishsoftball.org).
With every single GB Softball Team in official competition this year, the full costs of travel, food and accommodation for these tournaments will be more than £100,000 – and most of that cost falls directly on the players and/or their families.
Every GB Team is struggling with costs, and it is getting to the point where some players are having to refuse selection because they can't afford to play for their country.
Any help, no matter how small, will be appreciated. You can help any or all of the GB Teams through the DONATE button on the Home Page of the BSF website.