Twenty-eight teams in A, B and C-grade divisions battled it out in sunshine and drizzle at the PSST! 2013 Tournament run by the Pioneers Softball Club at the University of Kent in Canterbury on the weekend of 22-23 June, with H2O, Raiders Gold and the Leeds Terriers taking the main trophies.
Results
The main results were:
A Cup Champion: H2O
A Cup Runner-up: Chromies
A Plate Champion: Dragons
A Plate Runner-up: Warriors
B Cup Champion: Raiders Gold
B Cup Runner-up: Meteors
B Plate Champion: Swingers
B Plate Runner-up: Blitz
C Cup Champion: Leeds Terriers
C Cup Runner-up: Chalfont
C Plate Champion: Honey Badgers
C Plate Runner-up: Vodafone Heat
A Cup MVPs were Lee Cornwall from H2O and Chiya Louie from Chromies.
The Play Hard/PARTY HARDER Tournament Award went to Oblivion.
Tournament story
The following report on the tournament was written by the Pioneer's Dan Spinks.
The 13th annual PSST! Slowpitch Softball Tournament took place over the weekend of 22-23 June in gloriously changeable British weather: drizzly sideways rain on Saturday morning, windy in the afternoon with outbreaks of sun and much improved on Sunday but still with a fair amount of wind – this time from Mother Nature and not the few players being a little too vocal pre-tournament on social media sites!
PSST! is branded as a tournament where you play hard and PARTY HARDER so when the games were underway from 8.30 am on Saturday there were most definitely some sore heads from the night before at Woody's Bar (some of these heads never actually made it to the diamond to play softball, but did show up on Sunday). Games carried on until 7.30 pm, quite a mammoth day for the umpires who did a tremendous job with consistent calling and game management, led by crew chief Jes Sandhu and with game breaks covered by the qualified umpires who play for the Pioneers.
Teams had to contend with some challenging conditions but in the true spirit of the game just got on with it and played some fantastic softball across all divisions. This may well have been helped by the touring ASA coaches, who offered coaching and game management advice to any team who wanted it during the tournament. We were lucky that they could see the standard of softball in the UK and pass on their expertise, so thank you Steve Shortland, Head Coach of the USA Men's Slowpitch Team and Cheryl Trapnell. former Head Coach of the All-Armed Forces Women's Slowpitch Team. It was a pleasure to meet you and you're welcome back any time.
A nice comment came from one of the C-grade players who spoke at the end of the day on Sunday to one of the Pioneers while they were breaking down the temporary fences to say, “It was so nice to have C-grade with fences. Thank you so much for making the effort – it made our game much better and we appreciate it.”
That in essence is what PSST! is about: the same for all. Everyone gets free beer, everyone gets a fair amount of games, new balls, everyone get a tournament T-shirt and a party. Yeah, the A teams get more games on pitches 1, 2 and 3, but all pitches are of the same standard. A big thank you to the skilled groundsmen at the University of Kent who always ensure the fields are in the best possible conditions for all the players – for this we are grateful!
As Day 1 ended at 7.30 pm, with most teams finishing the round-robin part of the schedule, teams were invited to take part in a Flip Cup Championship hosted in the new Sports Pavilion. No winding down after a full day's play – it was straight into the PARTYING HARDER aspect of the tournament. As teams took to the tables, it was clear that this event was warmly received, with an atmosphere that could only be described as just falling short of the Mo Farah Olympic Super Saturday from a noise point of view. The loudest cheer of the night came as the Full Cup Flip Cup Final was won by The Blitz in one of the closest finals in the history of the world.... Watch out for the PSST!-branded Flip Cup tables at another tournament soon.
Then it was onwards to KBAR for the annual PSST! 2013 Party, including the Slideshow created by Kelly Page with photos taken throughout the day by Michelle Reyland. Players were photographed over the course of the day and were then displayed on 10 screens around the venue, creating added memories for all those players who embraced the spirit and only worry about sleeping during the working week!
Waking up on Sunday, if you had gone to bed, was somewhat challenging, but as all of the players stay on-site in accommodation next to the playing fields, this made it much easier to get to the fields on Sunday morning. As the games started on Sunday, the sun stayed with us (for the most part) and all the teams gave everything they had to progress further into the tournament.
With eight teams in B-grade Rec and Comp, the divisions broke off into Cup and Plate. In the B Comp Plate final, Swingers blitzed the Blitz 18-12 while Honey Badgers beat Vodafone Heat 14-12 in a very close C Plate final.
In the B Comp Cup final, Raiders Gold beat Meteors 18-12. Everyone knew this game had finished because the Raiders were yelling and squealing so loudly that everyone on pitch 1 watching the A Comp Final stopped to look over! The C Cup was won by Leeds Terriers who beat Chalfont 13-7.
That leaves the A Division, contested by 12 teams, one of which, the Belgian Oakes, travelled over from Belgium to compete. For a team brought up on fastpitch they did extremely well, finishing fifth overall, though they had a few select players helping them out during the tournament.
With all of the usual suspects in attendance, Dragons took the A Plate final 20-8 over the Warriors. The A Cup final was a really close game between H2O and Chromies, with Lee Cornwall hitting the winning two runs for H2O to beat Chromies 13-12 in a very compelling contest.
Then that was it – done for another year. A good number of players stayed to watch the A final and then gathered round the awards table, the back of the Keaveney Contractors Flat Bed Truck, to be awarded with custom-made metal PSST! Trophies, with the MVPs taking home hand-carved PSST! Guerrillas made by Phil Hazard, father of GB shortstop Steve Hazard. The winners in Cup competitions also took home a team bat, kindly donated by Dean McLellan and custom mobile phones cases provided by Tom Withers for each player.
That was it for the awards except for one…. At mid-morning on Sunday, a rather large reflective object made an appearance on the fields, carried over by three or four people. As soon as the Pioneers saw this, these guys had won the Play Hard/PARTY HARDER award for the tournament. The object turned out to be a massive armchair made out of used beer cans We were all very impressed, and putting two and two together, Oblivion were chosen for this award. Well done, you beer monsters!
So with all the awards handed out it was left to say thank you to all who put in an immense amount of time to organise a special tournament for the softball community. The Pioneers know it’s special because of the number of teams who unfortunately couldn't get a space in this year's event, although we try our very best to accommodate as many as we can. Special mentions to Liz Keaveney, Kelly Page, Sean Spinks, Michael Lee and Kim Akehurst, the team behind the team, and all the rest of the Pioneers who help out in various ways throughout the event with whatever needs doing.
There are a lot of unsung heroes in our sport. We're not blowing our own trumpet, we are not perfect, the Pioneers make some bad calls and some great ones – but we do know what it takes to put on an event and to play in tournaments for our own enjoyment and that of others. We would like to say a heartfelt thank you to anyone who does a job just to allow players to play the game – coaches in the grass roots, those who work from behind a desk, mid-week teams, tournament teams, national teams and the governing body etc. Sometimes, when you’ve done a lot of service to a sport and the people who play it, it just gets tougher to continue to do it year in year out, no matter how good it is. So enjoy the good times at all times, and try to be cool if it doesn’t quite go your way, because we all want Softball to be the Winner!
Dan Spinks
PSST! Event Organiser