By Bob Fromer
Rosmalen, Netherlands: 16 July – The 2015 GB Women’s Fastpitch Team, a smaller than normal squad in any case, has still to fully arrive in Holland for the European Women’s Championships that begin on Sunday. Eleven players are here, with two more to arrive tomorrow.
Late and scattered arrivals aren’t the ideal preparation for a major tournament, but even so, the team is beginning to take shape. And this evening, after just two training sessions, the GB Women played an exhibition game against the Dutch club teams Centrals, with a few players mixed in from the Cardinals Softball Club in Oss, which hosted the game.
Centrals is the club team that GB pitcher Carling Hare and catcher Steph Pearce are playing for this summer to get ready for the European Championships.
The result of the game was a satisfying 6-1 win for GB, and there were many positives to take from a contest against opponents who featured some decent pitching and fielding (neither team made an error and Centrals fielders made some fine catches to rob GB batters of potential hits).
Pitching and hitting
Both starting GB pitcher Carling Hare, who pitched the first four innings, and 16-year-old Georgina Corrick, who pitched the last three, threw extremely well, with good control and a high percentage of first pitch strikes. Carling allowed just two singles in her four innings, with no walks and six strikeouts. Georgina Corrick allowed three singles and one run, all in the bottom of the seventh inning, but struck out four, and no one hit the ball hard against her.
And Georgina, probably the youngest player ever to play for the Senior GB Women’s Team, was also the offensive star of the evening, with two home runs, one a grand slam, and five RBIs. The game was played in one corner of a baseball field, with no temporary fencing for softball, so any hit that bisected the outfielders was going to roll forever. Both of Georgina’s home runs -- both vicious line drives to left centre field -- did exactly that.
GB recorded eight hits against three Centrals pitchers and had baserunners in five of the seven innings, with seven runners left on base. Catcher Steph Pearce (who later switched to left field) had three singles, Georgina Corrick had the two home runs, Lauren Evans had an RBI double, Sarah Craig an RBI single, and Chloe Wigington singled in the second inning to record the first GB hit of the game.
Transition
This is a year of transition for the GB Women’s Team. Long-time stalwarts Laura Thompson, Karlene Headley-Cooper and Sarah Jones all retired after last year’s World Championships in Holland, and both Chiya Louie and Keeli Waugh, who have been with the team the past two years, are unable to play because of injuries.
So the team has gotten considerably younger with the arrival of former GB Under-19 player Hayley D’Avilar and current Under-19s Lauren Evans and Georgina Corrick, plus the return of Amy Wells, who didn’t play for the Women’s Team last year.
But these younger players will be anchored by seasoned veterans Alicja Wolny, Amy Moore, Sarah Craig and Kori Waugh, along with Steph Pearce and Carling Hare, who are now the longest-serving players on the team.
So this is a talented squad, and as Head Coach Hayley Scott said after watching them at practice, “they may surprise a lot of people”.
And a young, talented squad is exactly what GB needs right now, with the possibility of softball regaining an Olympic place for 2020 in Tokyo, and, if that happens, a winner-take-all Euro/Africa Qualifying Tournament in 2019. In a sense, the build-up to that tournament starts now.
Looking ahead
Tomorrow (Friday), the last two squad players – Alicja Wolny and Kori Waugh – will arrive in Holland, probably not in time for a training session in the morning, but hopefully in time to play in a scrimmage game against the Austrian national team in the afternoon.
On Saturday, GB will have a final scrimmage game against another Dutch club team, and then the 20-team European Women’s Championship will start on Sunday 19 July, with GB playing Slovakia at 10.00 am and Switzerland at 5.30 pm.
On Monday, GB will play their perennial round-robin opponents Italy and finish pool play with a game against Greece on Tuesday. Assuming GB has finished first or second in the group and qualified for the playoffs, a testing schedule of three playoff rounds and two games per day will begin on Wednesday.
Reports on all GB Women’s Team games will be posted on this website, and play-by-play can be followed on the ESF website, www.europeansoftball.org. Live webstreaming of the last two days of the competition should be available – go to http://europeansoftball.org/competitions/detail/22.