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Almost two years to the day after the National Baseball and Softball Centre at Farnham Park was opened by BSUK, the venue will host its first international competition on the weekend of 6-7 June.
The tournament is the London Cup, an international women’s fastpitch competition that will feature the Danish National Team and club teams from Paris, France and Stuttgart, Germany as well as the London Angels club team, winner of the European Women’s Cup in 2013, and a GB Select Team made up primarily of GB Under-19 and GB Women players.
The GB Select Team will be coached by GB Under-19 Women’s Team coaches Rachael Watkeys and Liz Knight.
Long-running competition
This year’s London Cup, supported by BSUK and the British Softball Federation, is the first since 2012, but the tournament goes all the way back to 2002, and has been run seven times since then, with the dual aim of bringing international fastpitch competition to Britain and helping GB players based in this country prepare for ESF and ISF tournaments during the summer.
From the point of view of the BSF and BSUK, hosting an international event at Farnham Park is a step on the road to potentially hosting official European Softball Federation fastpitch competitions in the UK in future, something that wasn’t possible before Farnham Park was built -- though the BSF has hosted two European Slowpitch Championships in Britain.
In addition to the three teams coming from Europe for the tournament, there will also be four umpires flying in from the Continent. They will be joined by our two resident ISF-qualified umpires, Bridget Cameron and Jana McCaskill, flying down from Edinburgh. The eight-person umpire crew will also include BASU Umpire-in-Chief Jes Sandhu and BASU Fastpitch Officer David Hurley, and will run a three-umpire system on all 13 games on the tournament schedule.
Spectators welcome
Spectators are welcome at the tournament, and there will be food and drink available on site over both days.
Play will get under way at 10.00 am on Saturday morning, 6 June, when Denmark will take on Stuttgart, with the GB Select team playing BAT Paris at 10.30. BAT Paris is the club team headed by former GB Women’s Team player Fleur Edgerton-Meyer until her death from cancer in 2012.
The London Angels will play their first game at noon against Stuttgart, and then all teams will participate in a brief Opening Ceremony at 2.00 pm. Play will continue until around 7.00 pm.
Play will resume at 9.00 am on Sunday morning with the final three round-robin games. This will be followed by a 4v5 play-in game, a third place game and the final. The final will be played at either 1.00 pm (if Denmark is one of the finalists) or at 3.00 pm if not, since the Danes will need to get back to Gatwick for their early-evening flight home.
The last two games of the tournament -- the third-place game and the final -- will be webstreamed live on BSUK TV and will be available to watch or download after the event from this link.
But with no major slowpitch tournaments in the South East on that weekend, the London Cup will provide a great chance for players and fans to come out in person to watch high-quality fastpitch in action and to support the two British teams in the tournament.