Bob Fromer
Ronchi di Legionari, Italy: 21 July – The final games to determine medals and places at the European Under-19 Women’s Fastpitch 
Championship will take place here today – sadly, without the GB Under-19s taking part – but tomorrow, the whole carnival will move on to Trnava in Slovakia.
That’s where the European Under-22 Women’s Championship will begin on Monday 23 July, and for many of the countries competing in both tournaments, the cast of characters will be similar, with a larger or smaller number of players taking part in both competitions.
For GB, the number is on the larger side, with 11 of the 16 players on their Under-22 roster having just played in the Under-19 Championship here in Italy. They be joined tomorrow, on the bus that the European Softball Federation has chartered to move the whole show from Italy to Slovakia, by just five older players – and by a whole new staff.
Of course, GB would not have had the same number of players doubling up but for the fact that the Under-22 Championship ends on 28 July, just days before the WBSC Women’s World Championship in Japan begins on 2 August. Had the tournaments been further apart, then a number of players aged 22 or under from the GB Senior Women’s Team would have been able to play in Trnava.
Instead, a number of younger players are going to get double the games and double the experience out of this European summer.
Changes
That’s not say that the 17 countries that will be playing in Trnava will be the same as the 17 countries that played in Italy (the fact that the number is the same is coincidence).
Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Serbia and Spain played in the Under-19 Championship but have not entered the Under-22 competition; they are being replaced by Austria, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Turkey, Slovakia and Switzerland.
The countries playing in both tournaments are Belgium, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia and Ukraine.
For those countries playing twice in a row, and especially those like Great Britain, with a majority of their rosters consisting of the same players, it will be interesting to see the effects on those players of playing two consecutive weeks of softball in the middle of a hot European summer.
GB preparations
The five older GB Under-22 players, and the GB Under-22 staff, led by Head Coach Johanna Malisani, have been here in Italy during the past week, training, getting to know each other, and supporting and occasionally spending time with the Under-19 Team and staff.
Now it’s a whole new situation, especially for the 11 Under-19 players going on to Trnava, who will have to adapt, not just to a new environment and perhaps a different level of play, but also to a whole new staff of coaches, a new Team Manager and a different physiotherapist.
It will be an interesting experiment, and it may test these players’ flexibility as well as their stamina.
The GB Under-22 Team is as follows, with the players who have just played in the Under-19 European Championship marked with an asterisk (*):
Katie Burge*
Saskia Davies*
Hannah Edwards*
Amie Hutchison
Andrea Johnson*
Lauren King*
Holly Newell
Diana Nisbett*
Olivia Lee*
Casey Moritz
Megan Parno*
Chelsie Robison
Sydney Robson*
Alana Snow*
Kyra Watson*
Sian Wigington
The team staff is:
Head Coach: Johanna Malisani
Assistant Coach: Gina Carbonatto
Pitching Coach: Windy Thees
Team Manager: Whitney Hollis
Physio: Edwin Lam
Johanna Malisani is BaseballSoftballUK’s Fastpitch Development Manager, and last year was the Head Coach for the GB Under-16 Girls, taking them to fifth place in the 2017 European Cadette Championship.
Gina Carbonatto and Windy Thees, both experienced American college coaches, have joined the GB programme for the first time this year, and Whitney Hollis is new to the ranks of GB Team Managers.
Edwin Lam, however, has been with GB for the past couple of years, as the physio for the GB Under-19s in 2016 and the GB Under-16s last year.
The tournament
The GB Team, entering the European Under-22 Championship for the first time this year, has been drawn in Pool A, the pool with the “17th team”, along with Greece, Turkey, Ireland and the hosts Slovakia.
This means an extra first-round pool game for the teams in Pool A as compared to Pools B, C and D, and so GB will have two games on Monday 23 July – against Ireland at 9.00 am and Turkey at 1.00 pm -- and two more games on Tuesday, against Greece at 2.00 pm and Slovakia at 6.30 pm, before the tournament moves to playoffs on Wednesday.
Here again, just as in the Under-19 Championship in Italy, the ESF has contrived to put the Netherlands and Italy in the same first-round pool group. This means that were GB to win Pool A, they could face consecutive games against the Czech Republic and either the Dutch or the Italians in the first playoff round, which is not the reward you should get for winning a pool group. But GB will have to win it first!
It’s another punishing schedule of the kind that the ESF seems wedded to for its larger tournaments, with two games for most teams every day from Monday through Friday. This puts a major strain on pitching staffs, but in this unique situation, it will be a severe physical test for all the players, from whatever team, who are playing high-level tournament softball for the second week in a row.
Media
Reports from all GB games at the European Under-22 Women’s Championship will be posted daily on this website.
At this point, webstreaming provision at the tournament has yet to be announced.