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By Bob Fromer
Clearwater, Florida, USA: 21 July – The GB Under-19 Women’s Fastpitch Team arrived in Florida on Wednesday, just four days before the start of the WBSC Junior Women’s World Championship, with five scrimmage games lined up by way of preparation. But so far, playing them hasn’t been easy.
The idea was to play South Africa on Thursday, the Philippines on Friday, a doubleheader against a local high-level travel ball team on Saturday and Japan on Sunday, plus fit in a couple of training sessions.
Well, the training sessions have happened – though not always where they were meant to take place – but so far the scrimmage games have been wholly or partly scuppered by a combination of thunderstorms, lightning, non-appearance of opponents, absconding umpires and some organisational panic.
Double trouble​
The panic has taken place among hard-pressed officials from the Amateur Softball Association of America (ASA), who in the words of one observer have “bitten off more than they can chew” in trying to run 16U and 18U Gold National Championships here in Clearwater, ending on Saturday, while trying to cater for the training needs of 26 national teams that will start the World Junior Championship on Monday, using essentially the same fields and facilities.
Throw in thunder, lightning, rain and flooded infields, and the results have been chaos, and a lot of worried-looking ASA officials spending a lot of time on phones.
For the GB Under-19s, who need games to help a team that has come from around the world gel into an effective unit over four short days, this has not so far been helpful.
After a heavy thunderstorm, Thursday’s game against South Africa was re-scheduled for a different time and a different field, and in the end, after a lot of confusion, the South Africans – coached by former GB Women’s Team Head Coach Hayley Scott – decided against turning up to play it.
Today, after more rain, GB’s game against the Philippines was moved back, then the Philippines team got lost trying to find the venue, and the game started so late that it had to be called in the middle of the fifth inning.
Why? Because the entire umpiring crew had tickets to a Tampa Bay Rays baseball game and had to leave to get to Tropicana Field!
Such has been GB’s luck so far. Hopefully the games over the weekend will go ahead as scheduled. But thunderstorms could happen at any point (it’s that time of the year in Florida), and Sunday’s game against Japan has already been threatened by a lack of umpires because it takes place at the same time as the tournament Technical Meeting.
Welcome to the madhouse!
GB v The Philippines​
Most of the players and coaches on the Philippines Junior National Team flew into Florida this morning after a 22-hour flight, checked into their hotel, had lunch and then set off to play a scrimmage game against the GB Juniors, getting lost along the way.
Tired they may have been, but it didn’t prevent the Philippines from winning the umpire-abbreviated game by a score of 2-0 over four-and-a-half innings.
Both teams used two pitchers and a lot of position players, and would undoubtedly have used more had the game gone the intended seven innings.
The score and the result didn’t matter, but both teams will be weighing up the positives and not-so-positives from the game.
Defense
For GB, the main positives were on defense, where the infield and outfield both looked sharp and the infield cut down two Philippine runners at the plate, one on an excellent 6-3-2 double play and the other on the classic attempted double steal of second and home.
Shortstop Katie Burge, new to the team this year, was in the middle of both plays and had an excellent game, with two put-outs and six assists.
Pitching
The five innings in which the Philippines batted were thrown by two pitchers new to the GB Junior Team this year, Beth Fleming and Andrea Johnson.
Beth pitched the first two innings and pitched effectively to contact, allowing just one baserunner in the first inning on a walk and another in the second inning on a single, and otherwise inducing ground balls and pop-ups.
Andrea Johnson pitched the other three innings, and allowed both Philippine runs, one in the top of the third inning and the other in the top of the fifth.
The Philippines only managed two singles against Andrea, who pitched strongly, but lack of control got her in trouble, as she walked four hitters and threw a couple of wild pitches, one of which brought in the second Philippine run. The defensive plays described above, and some clutch pitches when she needed them, kept further runs from scoring during Andrea’s tenure in the circle.
Hitting
There wasn’t much to say about GB’s hitting against two Philippine pitchers, as GB batters drew three walks and mostly put bat to ball (there were only three strikeouts), but failed to record a hit.
This can probably be put down to shaking the cobwebs off against live pitching, since the team had demonstrated a lot of offensive capability in winning the European Junior Championship last summer, and no doubt the hits will come.
The GB Juniors will open the World Championship on Monday, in what has been described as the “Group of Death”, with games against Korea and China and very little margin for error if they want to advance from the first round-robin to Championship playoffs.
The scrimmage games still to come against the Tampa Bay Mustangs and the defending Junior World Champions Japan will be vital in getting GB ready for the test.