By Bob Fromer
Plant City, Florida, USA: 16 November -- The 2016 Slowpitch World Cup, organised by the World Baseball Softball Confederation Slowpitch Division, will kick off at noon on Thursday in Plant City Florida -- but with a smaller group of competitors than the GB Slowpitch Team had been expecting.
Most of the 18-strong GB Team, led by Head Coach Stephen Patterson, arrived in Florida last weekend, only to learn that the competition had been reduced to six countries by the late withdrawal of a team from the United States and the earlier withdrawal of a team from Canada.
Two years ago, a team from the United States won the tournament, and last year Canada finished third, one place ahead of GB – so two of the teams that would have offered the strongest competition are not playing. While this may increase GB’s medal chances, that will be outweighed for the coaching staff and players by the lack of opportunity to play against potentially strong opposition.
So the 2016 Slowpitch World Cup will now be a straight fight between Europe and the Caribbean, with the six teams consisting of GB, Germany, Bulgaria, the Bahamas, the Turks & Caicos Islands and Curacao.
That group should still provide some tough games, since the Bahamas and Germany were last year’s finalists (the Bahamas won the title based on earlier results when rain forced the final to be abandoned after three innings with Germany leading 12-3), while Curacao and the Turks & Caicos Islands finished just behind GB in the standings.
The year, the weather is set fair, with a forecast of sun all week, chilly evenings, but afternoon temperatures of 22 to 26 degrees.
Schedule
With just six teams participating, the tournament has now been rescheduled as a double round-robin plus a seeding round for the top four teams and then a Page Playoff. That means the teams will be busy, with a schedule – and this may be a first for an international slowpitch competition – even more demanding that of tournaments in Britain.
The GB Team will play four games on Thursday (three of them in a row), four games in a row on Friday and back-to-back games on Saturday morning before the playoffs start on Saturday afternoon.
On Thursday, with games beginning at noon, GB will open against Curacao, and then, after a one-game break, will take on the Bahamas, Bulgaria and Germany in quick succession.
GB's first game against the Turks & Caicos Islands will come at noon on Friday and will followed by consecutive games against the Bahamas, Curacao and Germany.
The British will finish round-robin play on Saturday morning with games against the Turks & Caicos Islands at 10.30 and Bulgaria at noon.
While all of the round-robin games will be played in 90-minute time slots on two of the four diamonds at the Randy L. Larson Softball Fourplex at the headquarters of the WBSC Softball Division (formerly the International Softball Federation), the playoff games on Saturday and Sunday will take place in the Main Stadium at the complex, which in bygone days was the spring training home of the Cincinnati Reds.
For the second straight year, the Slowpitch World Cup will be played in conjunction with Plant City’s annual Pig Jam, a state-wide Pro-Am Barbecue Championship that will take place over Friday and Saturday and will feature fireworks and country music as well as food.
Players and staff
The coaching staff for the GB Slowpitch Team at the World Cup is Stephen Patterson and David Lee, with Kellie Whitaker doing her first tour as Team Manager.
The original roster of 14 players that was selected earlier in the autumn has been augmented by other GB and some guest players, and the full squad is now as follows:
WOMEN
Danielle Atkinson
Michelle Collier
Annie Dubovec
Katherine Golik
Natasha Humphris
Sherry Kenyon
Kirstie Leach
Hannah Pitman
Claudine Snape
Anna Whicher
MEN
David Grey
Roger Grooms
Kelvin Harrison
Mike MacDowell
Jeff Swindell
Aaron Thomas
Matt Tomlin
Chris Yoxall
David Lee may be added to the roster at Thursday morning's Technical Meeting as pitching cover for Roger Grooms, who damaged an ankle in training on Tuesday.
Since arriving Florida, the team played in a tournament last Sunday, took Monday off, trained on Tuesday at the tournament venue, and then played two scrimmage games on Tuesday night at the Atlanta Braves spring training ground at Disney in Orlando.
Earlier today, the team had a final light training session before the action starts tomorrow.
Daily reports from the 2016 Slowpitch World Cup will be published on the BSF website.