The British Softball Federation held its 2022 Annual General Meeting as a remote meeting on the afternoon of Saturday 26 February, with a total of 69 people in attendance, including nine members of the BSF Executive and three BSUK staff members.
With the Covid-19 pandemic seeming largely behind us at this point in time, the general feeling at the AGM was that people were looking forward to a full season of domestic and international play the summer.
The meeting was recorded, and a link will be available shortly for anyone interested.
A total of 56 voting forms were returned during the meeting, which included votes cast to elect Officers to the BSF Executive and to approve Minutes from the 2021 AGM, the 2020-21 Accounts and 2021-22 Budget, and proposed team affiliation fees for 2022.
The meeting, which included the announcement of the BSF’s Annual Awards for the 2021 season and the names of 11 new members to be inducted into the BSF Hall of Fame, took less than 90 minutes to complete and included virtually no discussion of any items by those in attendance.
The BSF held a remote AGM in 2021 to comply with Covid-19 restrictions, and again this year because when plans for the meeting were being made, some restrictions were still in place and the threat posed by the Omicron variant was unclear.
Assuming that life moves forward without further pandemic restrictions, the BSF will need to consider whether to continue with remote AGMs in future now that the technology to do this is tried and tested. On the one hand, a remote AGM saves everyone involved a lot of time and money; on the other hand, it seems to restrict discussion and debate and makes the AGM a largely pro-forma affair. To help decide what kind of AGM to hold in future, the BSF Executive may conduct a poll of members at some point later this year.
Election of Officers
All nine candidates for Officer positions on the BSF Executive were unopposed, and all were elected either unanimously or with overwhelming majorities, with a total of just five “None of the Above” votes cast across all candidates. The BSF Executive for 2022 will be:
President: Ieuan Gale
Treasurer: Laura Burkhardt
Competitions & Membership Officer: Liz Graham
Technical Officer: Pete Saunders
Coaching Officer: Michael Lott
Communications and Marketing Officer: Simon Mortimer
Safeguarding Officer: Stella Ackrell
General Officer/Finance: Mike Jennings
General Officer/National Championship Support: Lesley Morisetti
The first three positions listed are Directors of BSF Ltd.
The position of National Teams Officer is currently vacant and the BSF will attempt to fill this important position by co-option.
The BSF Administrator – a position currently held by Bob Fromer – is a part-time paid position and is not subject to election.
The BSF/BSUK Fastpitch Development Manager – a position currently held by Alyson Spinas-Valainis – has been a full-time paid role shared between the BSF and BaseballSoftballUK and appointed by a joint panel made up of members from both organisations. However, from 1 April 2022, BSUK will take on sole responsibility for supporting this role.
Other votes
With regard to other matters on the voting form, the Minutes of the 2021 AGM were approved with three abstentions; the BSF’s 2020-21 Accounts and proposed 2021-22 Budget were approved with four abstentions; and team affiliation fees for the 2022 season, which included a small rise for the first time in several years, were approved with three abstentions.
BSF Treasurer Laura Burkhardt told AGM attendees that the BSF had a budget surplus of over £13,000 in 2020-21 as against a projected loss of around £3,000, largely because of an emergency Sport England Covid grant and the fact that no national teams competed abroad during the 2021 season.
This allowed the Federation to rebuild its reserves in 2021 back to around £43,000.
For 2021-22, the Budget approved by the AGM projects a planned deficit of almost £17,000, which will take reserves back down to around £26,000, less than what they need to be. The Budget includes a conservative estimate of the number of affiliated teams in 2022, and the deficit could be mitigated to some extent if team numbers bounce back to near pre-pandemic levels, which some (but not all) leagues are predicting.
Nevertheless, the BSF may need further fee increases in future to build reserves back to the level that good governance principles require, a strategy supported during the AGM by former BSF President Jenny Fromer.
BASU report
The AGM included a brief report from BSF Technical Officer and BASU Training Officer Pete Saunders.
Pete told the meeting that the standard BASU Qualification course was now available online, in the form of four blocks of modules plus on online tutorial session after each block and then a field day at the end for assessment – a process which takes about eight weeks. Five leagues are currently running the course, three more are interested and feedback has been good. Already, more than twice the number of people are being trained this year than in 2019, the last “normal” year before the pandemic.
The online modules are available for anyone to watch free of charge; you don’t have to be a trainee umpire to do this! Anyone interested should contact Pete for the links.
Pete also reported that new WBSC Rulebooks for 2022-25 for both fastpitch and slowpitch will soon be published, but with no major rule changes.
Finally, he referred AGM attendees to the BSF website article on bat certification for clarity on which bats would be eligible for play this year in the UK and abroad.
BSUK section
The BaseballSoftballUK section of the AGM, presented by Head of Fundraising & Partnerships Joelle Watkins, Deputy Head of Development Leah Holmes and Gary Anderson, Head of Performance Systems, covered five main areas:
- BSUK’s Development Charter
- An update on developments at Farnham Park
- Slowpitch and Fastpitch Development Plans
- Return to Play updates
- National team development
Presentations on the first three topics were made at the remote BSF League Heads Forum held on 20 February and were reported in the website article on the Forum.
Return to Play. With all government Covid restrictions having now been removed in England, Joelle Watkins told the meeting that no measures were now required with regard to softball play, but the recommendation from both BSUK and the BSF was that caution should still be observed. A participant register could still be useful so that people could be contacted if anyone playing at the event went down with Covid shortly afterwards, and minimal hygiene measures around shared equipment could help prevent transmission.
National team development. This section of BSUK’s presentation was delivered by Gary Anderson, who has recently been hired, through UK Sport funding for the GB Senior Women’s Fastpitch and Men’s Baseball Teams, in a part-time role as Head of Performance Systems.
Gary has worked in a number of sports over the course of a long career in performance sport and has taken teams from both summer and winter sports to the Olympics.
“My role”, Gary said, “is to ensure the softball and baseball deliver on UK Sport’s performance objectives, and what UK Sport is looking for is medal success.”
Working with with newly-appointed Performance Management Groups for both softball and baseball, Gary is currently carrying out a Performance Pathway Review, which will include the launch of redesigned Academy programmes for both sports. The underlying objective is to identify, recruit and develop the appropriate athletes.
The GB Women’s Team came within one game of qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics, but Gary is also undertaking a Gap Analysis with regard to the team’s ability to qualify for and medal at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. How far away are we from being able to achieve that, and how can we develop a strategy to close the gap?
This year, Gary said, with success at the Women’s European Championship as a Key Performance Indicator for the team, we can begin to implement our strategy. But it’s only six years until the LA Olympics, he said, and that time will fly by.
In answer to a question, Gary said that while it had not yet been officially confirmed that baseball/softball would be on the Olympic programme in Los Angeles, a decision was expected soon – and he would be very surprised if this wasn’t the case.
Annual Awards and Hall of Fame Inductions
The AGM ended with an official announcement of the winners of BSF Annual Awards based on the 2021 season and of 11 individuals who have been elected to the BSF Hall of Fame in 2022.
Mention was also made of three members from the British softball community who were given coaching awards at the 2022 BSUK Coach Summit, and three members who were inducted into the Softball Europe Hall of Fame at the recent WBSC Europe Congress in Slovenia.
The names of all these award winners are given below, but details about their achievements can be found in this article on the BSF website.
ANNUAL AWARD WINNERS
Glover Cup: Ian Tomlin
League Glover Cup: Great Britain Fastpitch League
President's Club Award: The Mix
Umpire of the Year: Chris Lunn
Tournament of the Year: BSUK Slowpitch Cup
Youth Team of the Year: Archway Thunder (Stroud, Glos)
Betsy Holden Award: Megan Rollins
HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES
Players
Dan Spinks
Steve Hazard
Roger Grooms
Amy Moore
Player and Coach
David Lee
Coaches
Rachael Watkeys
Jim and Karen Murray
Development Achievement
Julie Spittle
Administration and Organisation Achievement
Jenny Fromer
2022 BSUK COACHING AWARDS
Softball Youth Coach of the Year: Holly Ireland
Softball Adult Coach of the Year: Trevor Sykes
Services to Coaching: Ian Tomlin
SOFTBALL EUROPE HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES
Players
Brett Gibbens
Stephanie Jardine
Umpire
Chris Moon
Brett and Steph are the first two slowpitch players to be inducted into the European Hall of Fame, and Chris Moon is the first slowpitch umpire.