By Bob Fromer
Ostrava, Czech Republic: 4 August – It's hot today in Ostrava. Not as hot as it was yesterday, when temperatures hit 37 degrees – as they are scheduled to do again by the middle of the week.
But hot enough to make today's afternoon practice session for the GB Under-16 Girls' Fastpitch Team at the Arrows Baseball and Softball Club on the outskirts of Ostrava, which is hosting the European Cadette Championships from tomorrow through Saturday, a sapping affair.
And the GB Team has to be careful to conserve its energy, and its players. A twelve-strong squad selected for the competition is already down to about 10-and-a-half players, with first base player Matilda Dowd here on crutches following a recent ankle injury in a rounders match, and outfielder Immy Thomas still recovering from torn knee ligaments.
Any more injuries and this team could be in trouble!
Opening test
The twelve countries contesting this tournament are the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Russia, Great Britain, Germany, Slovakia, Serbia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania and Lithuania.
The teams will start out with four round-robin groups of three teams each, and Great Britain's group includes the Netherlands and Romania. GB will play the Netherlands at 4.00 pm tomorrow (Monday) and Romania at 9.00 am Tuesday, and one win will be enough to take GB through to the playoffs.
After that, GB's schedule will depend on how the other groups have shaken out, but the team will almost certainly play doubleheaders in the heat on Tuesday and Wednesday.
GB finished seventh in this tournament two years ago in Antwerp, but this year's team is aiming higher, bolstered by a three-strong pitching staff of Amie Hutchison from Norfolk, Lorin Cook from New Zealand and Alana Snow, daughter of GB Men's Fastpitch Team Head Coach Russ Snow, from California.
Ten of the twelve players in the team are GB-based.
The back of beyond
As for Ostrava itself, a former Communist mining and industrial centre trying to come to terms with the 21st century, the following description was published in 1994, not long after the Berlin Wall fell and the coal mines in Ostrava were closed, in the American magazine Mother Jones:
“The city of Ostrava is not simply ugly. It is spectacularly, memorably ugly, the immense tombstone of an idea carried to its illogical extreme. Set on the southern edge of the Silesian hills where the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia meet, Ostrava was the crucible that forged the aspirations of Eastern European communism for two generations, the foundry that poured the Iron Curtain. It was populated according to a production plan, and the days of its 350,000 residents are regulated still by whistles and clanks.”
Well, there are fewer clanks and whistles than there used to be, and rather more residents, and a brand new city centre is being constructed where mines and steel mills used to stand -- but in any case the GB Cadettes are not here for the sightseeing. As their new Head Coach Jeremy Thomas said this afternoon, “We're here for just one thing – the softball.”
You can follow all of the GB Cadettes' games on the British Softball Federation website from tomorrow.