By Bob Fromer
Prague, Czech Republic: 14 July – The GB Women's Fastpitch Team may have unluckily failed to reach the last four in the European Women's Championships that concluded yesterday, and have thus failed to qualify for next year's World Championships in Holland.
But a look at the tournament statistics reveals how well the GB Team played in most facets of the game.
More offense
Over the past few years, GB Women's Teams have relied on the excellent pitching provided by Stacie Townsend and a generally tight defense, but have often struggled on offense except against weaker opponents.
This year, with Stacie and a number of other veteran players having retired, the character of the team has changed. The tight defense is still there – GB finished second only to the European Champions Netherlands in fielding in the tournament here in Prague, and this put GB ahead of the other three teams that made the final four: Italy, the Czech Republic and Russia.
But the biggest difference with this year's GB Women's Team is far more offense. GB finished third in team batting, behind the Netherlands and the Czech Republic (a team GB defeated). Great Britain had an excellent team batting average of .365, an on-base percentage of .468 and a slugging percentage of .471.
The team was tied for first in doubles with the Netherlands and Italy and was one of only three teams to hit a home run out of the spacious fields at Svoboda Park, with fence distances of at least 225'. That was hit by GB first base player Alicja Wolny against Russia.
GB hitters also showed patience at the plate, drawing 24 walks, tied for second place behind the Netherlands.
GB's relative weakness in this tournament was pitching, but even so the team was eighth in team pitching, and GB's main pitcher, Carling Hare, was tied for the tournament lead in games started, and finished sixth in strikeouts with an earned-run average under 2.00.
Carling blossomed during this tournament as GB's #1, and in her last three games threw an 8-0 shutout against Spain, defeated the Czech Republic 5-3 and then held Austria to a meaningless seventh inning run in GB's 5-1 win in the fifth place playoff game.
Individual leaders
The story of GB's improved offense becomes clear in looking at individual offensive stats.
Perhaps the biggest surprise for GB was the performance of shortstop Chiya Louie, who has been playing nothing but slowpitch in Britain for the past few years after a fastpitch career with high-level travel ball teams in the Seattle area and then at NCAA Division 1 Boston College.
During the training camp in Britain that preceded the tournament, Chiya was worried about whether she could get her fastpitch batting stroke back – but that didn't turn out to be a problem. Chiya was among the tournament's top five in batting average, hits, total bases and RBIs and led the tournament in doubles.
Matching Chiya in most of those categories was GB first base player Alicja Wolny, who led the team with a .529 batting average to Chiya's .526.
GB lead-off hitter Amy Moore finished the tournament batting .466, Karlene Headley-Cooper hit .388, Laura Thompson .368, catcher Steph Pearce .307 and third base player Sarah Craig hit .305.
Outfielder Naomi Jones saw only limited action during the tournament, but compiled GB's best batting average at .600 (3-for-5).
These offensive stats are made even more creditable by the fact that GB played in a much harder first-round group than any of the other leading teams except Russia (who was in GB's group along with the Plate winner Germany). The Netherlands, Italy and the Czech Republic all had more chances to fatten their stats against weaker teams and pitchers.
Bright future
GB offensive performance at the European Championships, the team's aggressive defense, the emergence of Carling Hare as an effective pitcher at this level and the promise shown by several young players with the GB Junior Women at the Junior World Championships in Canada all adds up to a bright future for the GB Women's Team.
That's provided that this group can stay together over the next three years, leading up to the next European Championships in 2015 and an open Women's World Championships in 2016.
Final standings
The final order of teams at the 2013 European Women's Fastpitch Championships was as follows:
1. Netherlands
2. Italy
3. Czech Republic
4. Russia
5. Great Britain
6. Austria
7. Sweden
8. Spain
9. Germany
10. Slovakia
11. Belgium
12. Ukraine
13. Denmark
14. Switzerland
15. Poland
16. Croatia
17. Israel
18. France
19. Hungary