By Bob Fromer
Nuoro, Sardinia, Italy: 27 June – Taking a flight out of Gatwick at 5.45 am is never fun. It’s rising in the middle of the night, or maybe never going to sleep. It’s the long drive in the dark to the sudden unending lights of the airport. It’s getting held up at security because of that forgotten tube of cream, that overlooked bottle of water, with security staff more jittery than usual. After the massacres in Tunisia and Kuwait earlier in the day, and the beheading in France, even young teenage girls in GB Softball T-shirts can arouse suspicion.
But everything else was smooth as silk. The flight left on time, it got in early, and the coach driver was there waiting to take the GB Under-16 Girls’ Fastpitch Team, on a beautiful cloudless day with the temperature still holding a hint of morning coolness, on the hour-and-a-half drive through dry forested hills and long lines of bushes with startling pink flowers, to the Sardinian mountain town of Nuoro, where the girls arrived in good spirits.
Nuoro is a functional Italian town, but not a particularly beautiful one. The pedestrianised Corso Garibaldo has some restaurants and shops and the unremarkable cathedral faces the pleasant Piazza Santa Maria delle Neve. But there are stunning views from many points in the town across the jumbled hills and valleys -- and one bare sawtooth mountain range -- that surround it.
This is where the European Cadette (Under-16) Girls’ Fastpitch Championships will be played during the coming week, beginning on Monday 29 June, at the little Francesco Sanna Stadium, a single diamond with lights, where the left field foul line runs parallel to the traffic on the busy Via Salvatore Mannironi, separated only by a high net that is not always high enough.
And it’s where the GB Under-16 Team, with some players meeting for the first time during training sessions last week in the UK, are going to have to bond quickly, on and off the field, with training sessions today and tomorrow the last chance to complete the process. The aim is to do the one thing that GB Fastpitch teams always find the hardest: get off to a good start.
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No margin for error
The final architecture of this tournament makes a quick start essential if the GB Team is to get to the Page Playoff round and achieve their highest-ever placing in this competition.
That architecture has been ever-changing. Originally, twelve teams entered, and the mandated format was four groups of three, with GB sandwiched in the ultimate Group of Death between the Czech Republic and Italy. That happened because Italy was actually ranked below GB, but only because the Italians did not compete in Ostrava two years ago when GB finished sixth.
Then four countries dropped out, so it was two groups of four, and a much more reasonable group for the GB Team to contemplate.
Then two more countries dropped (flights to Sardinia are not cheap), and of course they were the weaker countries. So now it’s one pool, six teams, four to make the Page Playoffs, and GB scheduled to start their tournament in the heat of Monday afternoon with a game at 3.00 pm against Spain.
Youth Championships in Europe can be hard to predict, because they happen every two years, and age group teams run in cycles. One year’s team full of strong 16-year-old veterans can morph into a weaker team of 14 and 15-year-olds two years down the line.
But given that the opposition will now consist of Italy, the Czech Republic, Russia, Belgium and Spain, GB has to think that the two wins they need to make the Page Playoffs, on balance, are likeliest to come from Belgium and Spain. Which means that the opening game with Spain on Monday may define GB’s tournament.
Today, a sleepy Saturday in Nuoro, the afternoon temperature reached 31 degrees. On Monday, it should be similar; on Thursday, when GB will play Belgium in their final group game, it could be 35. Acclimatisation needs to be quick. But at the moment the heat is dry, like the town and the hills that surround it.
Making do
Money is always an issue in GB Fastpitch Team programmes, where most of the costs fall on players or, in this case, parents. So the GB Team and staff are sleeping on bunk beds in two rooms in a gym about 20 minutes’ walk from the ground, with a separate room for the male coaches – Head Coach Jeremy Thomas and Assistant Coach Larry Rushin. Assistant Coach Joss Thompson and Team Manager Sarah Rushin will be in with the girls, four of whom are from the United States, with the other eight from the UK. The UK-based players are fresh from the only competition they have been able to get this year, in the recently-concluded Great Britain Fastpitch League season.
There, the team started slowly in Division 2 but improved week by week, which is all the coaches can ask.
Four of the GB Under-16 players – pitcher Niamh Walker, plus Alana Snow, Laura Hirai and Annecy Stevens – will also be going later this summer with the GB Under-19 Women to the WBSC Junior World Championships in Oklahoma.
For these players, this is the start of a busy summer – especially for the multi-talented Laura Hirai, who is also going to Europe with GB Baseball teams and who turned up at Gatwick for the flight with, of all things, a rounders injury (a badly-grazed leg).
History
GB Softball has some history in Nuoro. In 2006, the GB Women’s Team, at the time the recipient of funding from UK Sport, came here in early June to play in an invitational tournament against Italy, the Czech Republic and Russia. Although GB (from memory) finished second, they did record their one and only victory over Italy, a 4-0 shutout thrown by an almost forgotten pitcher named Karlie Burnell, but rescued by a then 18-year-Stacie Townsend, now in the BSF Hall of Fame, who relieved Burnell with the bases loaded and no one out in the bottom of the seventh inning and kept the Italians from scoring.
That GB Women’s Team went on to win the largest-ever London Cup Tournament featuring both American and European teams in Croydon, almost beat both Japan and China in the World Cup of Softball in Oklahoma City and finish in a best-ever 10th position at the ISF World Championships in Beijing on the strength of wins over South Africa, New Zealand and North Korea.
Can the 2015 GB Under-16s, nine years later, make their own history in Nuoro?
All GB games during the tournament will be reported on this website, and games on the final day, Saturday 4 July, will be webstreamed live (go to http://europeansoftball.org/competitions/detail/20).
Photo by Jan Grafton shows the GB Junior Angels, with many of the GB Under-16s now in Nuoro, at the Great Britain Fastpitch League.