A contest run by the British Softball Federation to have a logo created for its annual Softball World Series tournament has been won by a 10-year-old pupil at The Hampshire School in Chelsea.
Originally, details of the contest were sent to teams that participated in the Softball World Series in 2015, with the idea that some of them might have a player with design skills.
But Team Canada captain Chris Macleod teaches art at The Hampshire School, a pre-preparatory and preparatory school for children aged three to 13, and decided to give the assignment of creating the logo to her Year 6 class.
After the students were shown video clips from softball games and were told about the World Series tournament’s international theme, nearly 40 entries were submitted.
Winning entry
The 40 entries were reduced to a shortlist of five, and members of the BSF Executive selected the logo drawn by a student named Delara Rahimi as the winner.
Delara wrote: “Our art teacher, Miss Macleod, told us about the contest and in class we watched some clips of slowpitch being played and saw examples of different designs. I found out that softball was a sport played across the world, so this gave me the idea to do flags surrounding a world/ball. I thought that not many people would do the design that I did.” Delara's design was:
Once the BSF had chosen the winner, designer Nigel Davies, who is in the BSF Hall of Fame for his media and design work for softball, was commissioned to do a professional version of Delara’s design, which looked like this:
Then, on 24 June, BSF General Officer Mike Jennings attended an assembly at The Hampshire School and presented a prize of £100 to Delara along with a T-shirt on which the logo had been printed.
Softball World Series
The new logo will now be used in conjunction with all publicity and promotion for the Softball World Series, which will be played this year on the weekend of 10-11 September at Imperial College’s Heston Venue (formerly the BA Concorde Club) in Cranfield.
The 2016 World Series, the 18th edition of the tournament, will have teams coming to the UK from Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Belgium and Ireland, and will also feature UK-based teams representing Australia & New Zealand, England, Scotland, Wales, Japan, Latin America and Africa.