Sunday 21st April saw Bristol Softball League hold their annual firstball tournament. This relaxed tournament aims to give Bristol league teams and umpires the opportunity to have a collection of games as a warmup and to get back into the swing of things (pun intended), with a great day of softball before the start of the season.
Monkeys won the Biffers tier
While the day started a little bit fresh, the sun soon made an appearance to help the sixteen teams across Bristol's three divisions play a set of round robin games to determine their final playoff position. While the top division group, named Biffers, saw last year's top two Div 1 teams face each other, the lower division Bashers group saw a closely fought battle with final standings only becoming clear in the final innings of the final group games.
The two groups' top seed playoff games saw Jets beat Sliders 12-7 in the Biffers Group, while Monkeys beat Vandals 11-2 in the Bashers Group.
Jets won the Biffers tier
The day also gave both our established and new league umpires a chance to get some practise in and saw the league welcome 7 newly qualified team umpires as well as many more BASU reassessments completed.