Monday 18 July -- European Championship tournaments are coming thick and fast these days, and the next GB Team to play in one is the GB Under-15 Women’s Fastpitch Team, which is taking on eight other teams starting today at the European Under-15 Women’s Championship in Enschede in the Netherlands.
Unfortunately, due to an error by the British Softball Federation in registering players for the event, the team will be able to play its games in the tournament but the results will not count in the tournament standings.
This will be the first-ever European Championship for the GB Under-15 Women. The Under-15s used to be an Under-16 team before the World Baseball Softball Confederation changed the age brackets for international competition a few years ago, and the last time the GB Under-16s played in a European Championship was way back in 2017 in Ostrava, in the Czech Republic, when they finished fifth.
This year’s GB Under-15 Team is obviously a whole new group of players, but still led by Head Coach Jo Malisani, who was also in charge in 2017.
Format
The nine countries entered in this year’s Under-15 Women’s Championship were seeded as follows:
The Netherlands
Italy
Czech Republic
Ukraine
Germany
France
Croatia
Great Britain
Lithuania
The reason GB is seeded so low is because we did not play in the last European Under-16 Championship held in 2019.
The tournament will be played as a full-round-robin from Monday through Friday, with every team playing all the others.
There will then be playoffs on Saturday.
The top teams that play in the gold medal game will also qualify for the WBSC Under-15 Women’s World Cup to be held in 2023.
GB will start the tournament with a single game on Monday against France and will end the main round-robin with a single game against Italy on Friday.
In between, GB will play Croatia and Germany on Tuesday, the Czech Republic and Ukraine on Wednesday and Lithuania and the Netherlands on Thursday.