Monday 27 June -- Great Britain’s 2022 European Championship campaign began earlier in June with victory by the European Men’s Slowpitch Team. This week, the GB Under-22 Women -- seen above with the Ukrainian team following the Opening Ceremony -- will be the first fastpitch team in European competition this summer, with several more to follow.
It’s been three long Covid-dominated years since a GB women’s or men’s fastpitch team last took part in a European Championship, and four years since the last Under-22 Women’s Championship was held. On that occasion, in Trnava, Slovakia, a talented GB Team was unlucky to finish in fourth place and just miss out on a medal, losing the bronze medal game to Ireland after beating them twice earlier in the tournament.
Three players from that 2018 team -- Katie Burge, Lauren King and Alexis Larrow -- are in this year’s squad but, not surprisingly, most of the players are new and this year’s team is looking to go one better than in 2018 and bring back a medal.
Led by Head Coach Jo Malisani, the team has convened in the UK to train at Farnham Park over the past few days before flying to Kunovice, in the south east of the Czech Republic near the Slovakian border, for the European Championship, which will begin with one game on Sunday 26 June, get fully under way on Monday 27 June and finish on Saturday 2 July.
Schedule
Seventeen teams have entered this year’s European Under-22 Women’s Championship – encouragingly, the same number that played when the tournament was last held in 2018.
Those 17 teams will be divided initially into four round-robin groups, and GB’s fourth-place finish in 2018 means that we are the top seed in Group D, which also contains the Czech Republic, Hungary and France.
Full seedings and the tournament schedule can be found here.
GB’s first game of the tournament will almost certainly be the most difficult group game: a 6.00 pm meeting (local time) with the host Czech Republic on Monday 27 June.
The tournament is using three fields – two in Kunovice and one in nearby Brno -- and GB will play the Czechs in Brno.
GB’s final two first-round games will be played on Tuesday 28 June in Kunovice – against Hungary at 9.15 am local time and France at 4.00 pm.
The top two teams from each first-round group will advance to further round-robins played from Wednesday through Friday, with gold medal, bronze medal and various final placing games on Saturday.
Players and staff
The players who will be travelling to the Czech Republic for the European Under-22 Women’s Championship are:
Molly Blackwood
Katie Burge
Jessica Chan
Imogen Gie
Lauren King
Alexis (Bam) Larrow
Carys Lynch
Cameron McGinnis
Morgan Salmon
Michelle Shaw
Georgia Wilson
The staff consists of:
Head Coach: Jo Malisani
Assistant Coach: Gina Carbonatto
Battery Coach: Windy Thees
Team Operations Manager: Whitney Hollis
Sports Therapist: Edwin Lam
Tournaments to come
The GB Under-22 Women will be followed into Europe, in fairly quick succession, by five other GB teams:
- The GB Under-23 Men’s Fastpitch Team will play in the European Under-23 Men’s Championship from 6-9 July in Sezimovo Usti in the Czech Republic.
- The GB Co-ed Slowpitch Team will play in the European Co-ed Slowpitch Championship from 12-16 July in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
- The GB Under-15 Women’s Fastpitch Team will play in the European Under-15 Women’s Championship from 18-23 July in Enschede in the Netherlands.
- The GB Senior Women’s Fastpitch Team will play in the European Women’s Fastpitch Championship from 24-30 July in Sant Boi, near Barcelona in Spain.
- Finally, after a bit of a break, the GB Under-13 Girls’ Fastpitch Team will play from 10-13 August in the annual European Massimo Romeo Youth Trophy tournament in Collecchio, near Parma in Italy.
Three of these tournaments – the Under-23 Men, Under-15 Women and Senior Women Championships – will also be qualifiers for upcoming WBSC World Cups.