By Bob Fromer
Sant Boi and Barcelona, Spain: 25 July – “Let’s get this done in as few innings as we can,” Head Coach Rachael Watkeys told the GB Senior Women’s Team before 
Sunday's opening games in the 23rd European Women’s Championship. And that’s exactly what the team proceeded to do, with three-inning mercy rule wins over Turkey and Ukraine.
In beating a developing Turkish team by 15-0 and a much more experienced and competent Ukrainian team by 17-0 on a hot day at the 1992 Olympic complex at Montjuic in Barcelona, the GB Women’s Team overcame an important hurdle in their quest for a medal at this competition, because these two wins moved GB into the bracket with the top 12 teams and thus into the tournament proper.
While these were games that the team was expected to win, they were also games that they had to win if they wanted to spend the rest of the week competing not only for medals but also for qualification for the WBSC Women’s World Cup Group Stage tournaments that will be staged in Europe in 2023.
The 15-0 win over Turkey on Sunday morning was a slow and painful affair because the Turks are not a team equipped to play at this level, and the game featured a rash of walks and illegal pitches by Turkish pitcher Sudenaz Turhan that slowed the game to a crawl. But it was only ever going to be a matter of how many runs GB could get, and how quickly they could score them.
The win over Ukraine on Sunday afternoon featured a thrilling offensive display from a GB team that came out firing and never stopped, with 16 hits flowing off GB bats to all parts of the ball park against a much more able pitcher, Daria Kobylianska, as 17 runs poured across the plate.
Unfortunately, however, this professional and accomplished win over Ukraine came at a considerable cost, as two GB players went down to somewhat freakish injuries and it’s not clear at this point whether either of them will be able to play again this week.
The first to get hurt was a valuable utility player, Cameron McGinnis, who can catch and play both infield and outfield positions. She was on third base in the top of the first inning when Katie Burge hit a hard line drive to the Urkainian third base player for the first out of the inning, and in freezing and trying unsuccessfully to get back to third base to avoid the tag, Cameron sprained her ankle and needed a considerable amount of attention before being carried off and taken to the local hospital for scans.
In the bottom of the second inning, Daria Kobylianska was at first after a single to right field – the only Ukrainian hit in the game – when GB catcher Amy Moore made a casual throw to first after a pitch to the next batter. In reacting to the throw, Kobylianska stepped on GB first base player Rebecca Faulkner’s foot rather than the base, and Rebecca went down with an injury that swelled up immediately and may be just a laceration and bad bruising but could be worse.
Rebecca is one of GB’s four pitchers, and if she can’t play again, this will put a lot of pressure on the other three with the bulk of the tournament still to come.
What happened today?
We’ll get to the details of GB’s two wins shortly, but first let’s explain what’s coming up over the next few days and how the format of this tournament works. If you already know, you can skip this section and go straight to the game reports below.
Twenty-one teams are competing in the European Women’s Championship this year, and they started on Sunday in four seeded round-robin pools – A, B, C and D – with five teams each in Pools A, B and C and six teams in Pool D.
However, the teams seeded first and second in each pool were already guaranteed a place in the next round of Championship playoffs, while the other teams in each pool spent Sunday playing in little round-robins of their own – call it an Entry Round -- to decide which team from each pool would join those top eight. Let’s look at what happened.
POOL A
Pool A started with the following teams in order of seeding:
Italy
Poland
Croatia
Belgium
Greece
On Sunday, Italy and Poland – the two teams guaranteed to be in the Championship second round – played each other to determine which will be seeded first going forward, and Italy won 11-0.
Meanwhile, Croatia, Belgium and Greece all played each other, with the following results:
Greece 18, Belgium 0 (4 inns)
Greece 3, Croatia 0
Croatia 5, Belgium 2
So Greece has joined the Championship playoff group while Belgium and Croatia will spend the rest of the week as part of a mini-tournament of nine teams gaining competition experience against teams at roughly their own level – that’s the theory behind the system -- and playing for places in the final tournament standings.
POOL B
Pool B started with the following teams in order of seeding:
Netherlands
Germany
Austria
Ireland
Switzerland
On Sunday, the Netherlands and Germany – the two teams guaranteed to be in the Championship second round – played each other to determine which will be seeded first going forward, and the Netherlands won 7-0 in five innings.
Meanwhile, Austria, Ireland and Switzerland all played each other, with the following results:
Ireland 12, Switzerland 0 (4 inns)
Austria 7, Switzerland 1
Ireland v Austria (postponed until Monday morning)
Ireland beat Austria 3-0 on Monday morning and has joined the Championship playoff group while Austria and Switzerland will spend the rest of the week as part of the mini-tournament of nine lower-half teams.
POOL C
Pool C started with the following teams in order of seeding:
Czech Republic
France
Ukraine
Great Britain
Turkey
On Sunday, the Czech Republic and France – the two teams guaranteed to be in the Championship second round – played each other to determine which will be seeded first going forward, and the Czechs won by 9-8 with a come-from-behind rally in the bottom of the seventh inning.
Meanwhile, Ukraine, GB and Turkey all played each other, with the following results:
Ukraine 20, Turkey 0 (3 inns)
GB 15, Turkey 0 (3 inns)
GB 17, Ukraine 0 (3 inns)
So GB joined the Championship playoff group while Ukraine and Turkey will spend the rest of the week as part of the mini-tournament of nine lower-half teams.
POOL D
Pool D started with the following teams in order of seeding:
Israel
Spain
Slovakia
Denmark
Finland
Malta
On Sunday evening, after the Opening Ceremony for the European Women’s Championship, Israel and Spain – the two teams guaranteed to be in the Championship second round -- played each other to determine which will be seeded first going forward, and Israel won by 7-1.
Meanwhile, Slovakia, Denmark, Finland and Malta all began playing each other on Sunday with the following results:
Denmark 16, Malta 0 (3 inns)
Slovakia 3, Denmark 1
Slovakia 22, Finland 1 (3 inns)
Malta 17, Finland 3 (4 inns)
However, this four-team round-robin still had two games to be played on Monday -- Slovakia v Malta and Denmark v Finland -- while all of the other teams in the tournament got the morning and half the afternoon off. Slovakia beat Malta 17-3 in four innings on Monday morning and have advanced to the Championship playoff rounds.
Incidentally, if some of the original group seedings look surprising, it’s because GB, Greece and Ireland – all teams that finished in the top eight at the European Women’s Championship in 2019 – did not play in the competition in 2021 for Covid-related reasons and so were ranked towards the bottom coming into this year’s Championship. Also, Russia, which finished in the top eight in 2021, has been excluded from the tournament this year. That’s why some surprising teams are starting the 2022 competition with guaranteed places in the second round.
What happens next?
Now that we know all of the teams in the top 12, those 12 teams will be split into two groups of six teams for the second round: Pools E and F.
GB will be in Pool E along with Italy, Germany, France, Israel and Ireland.
Pool F will have the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Greece, Poland, Spain and Slovakia.
Each six-team group In Pools E and F will play a full round-robin from Monday through Wednesday and three teams from each group will go forward to the third round. These teams will make up another six-team pool – Pool X -- and will play a round-robin over Thursday and Friday, but with results from second-round games carried forward.
The top two teams from the Pool X round-robin will play for the gold medal on Saturday while the third-place and fourth-place teams from Pool X will play for the bronze medal.
The three medal-winning teams will qualify for one of the three WBSC Women’s World Cup Group Stage tournaments to be played next year in Ireland, Spain and Italy, with the top teams from around the world taking part.
Now let’s get back to the games that GB won on Sunday to get to the second round.
GB 15, Turkey 0 (3 innings)
There’s not too much to say about the game against a very weak and inexperienced Turkish team that struggled to make basic softball plays.
Pitcher Sudenaz Turhan, who also absorbed much of the punishment when Turkey lost 20-0 to Ukraine in the first game of the day, throws at a reasonable pace but without much control, and while a few illegal pitches were called against her in the Ukraine-Turkey game, the home plate umpire in the GB-Turkey game called half a dozen illegal pitches in the first inning alone – calls that mean any baserunners get to move up a base each time.
Turhan also walked four in a bottom of the first inning in which GB sent 16 batters to the plate. GB had five hits, including a double and a home run by Georgina Corrick that were good for five RBIs and the Turkish defense threw in five errors.
The result was 13 runs, and the half-inning finally ended when a GB baserunner deliberately stepped off base for the third out.
In the bottom of the second inning, GB quickly scored the two runs they needed to bring up the mercy rule total of 15 that could end the game in three innings on consecutive hits by Jade Yerex, Tia Warsop, Aubrey Peterson and Morgan Salmon.
Meanwhile, GB pitcher Kim Hobson pitched three no-hit innings in which Turkey had just one baserunner – a walk to Deniz Demir in the top of the second inning. Kim struck out seven of the 10 batters she faced.
GB 17, Ukraine 0 (3 innings)
Not much more than an hour after the game against Turkey finished, the GB Women were back on the field to face Ukraine in a game that looked likely to be much more closely contested.
Ukraine had looked impressive in demolishing Turkey in the morning by an even bigger score than GB had managed, and like all Ukrainian sports teams in this terrible time, were clearly going to give everything they could to reach the second round.
The fact that Ukrainian softball is an improving programme has already been seen this summer in the fact that they finished in the top eight at the European Under-22 Women’s Championship and fourth in the recently-concluded European Under-15 Women’s Championship.
But Rachael Watkeys had asked the GB team to come out hard in the first inning, and that’s what they did.
Ukraine started with a pitching ploy.
Yuliia Malik, who had pitched the game against Turkey, started in the circle for Ukraine. But after she gave up a bunt single to GB lead-off hitter Tia Warsop in the top of the first inning and ran the count to 3-1 on Sydney Brown, the Ukrainians called time and brought in their #1 pitcher, Daria Kobylianska.
However, the ploy didn’t work. Kobylianska finished off the walk to Sydney Brown, and then Kendyl Scott and Lauren Brown smoked doubles into gaps in the outfield, Morgan Salmon reached on an error, Rebecca Faulkner, Cameron McGinnis and Amie Hutchison singled – and then Katie Burge smashed the line drive to third that resulted in a double play and the unfortunate injury to Cameron.
When played resumed after the injury break, a strikeout ended the inning, but GB had six runs on the board and was hungry for more.
Amie Hutchison did the pitching for GB in this game and faced the minimum number of nine batters in three innings. Ukraine had just one hit – the single by Daria Kobylianska in the bottom of the second inning that led to the injury to Rebecca Faulkner.
Typically, Amie only had one strikeout, though it was the final out of the game, but the GB defense snapped up all the balls that Ukraine put into play.
The bottom of the third inning featured an outstanding play from GB right fielder Tia Warsop. Ukrainian centre fielder Yana Matskevych opened the inning by lacing what should have been a single to right field – except that Tia charged the ball and threw her out at first base on a close play.
GB scored three more runs in the second inning to bring the score to 9-0, and then added eight more runs in the top of the third inning as the players and coaches counted down the number needed to bring up the three-inning mercy rule.
The third inning featured two trademark triples slashed into the left centre field gap by Katie Burge, and Lauren Evans also had a triple, while Kendyl Scott had her third hit of the game and Georgina Corrick, Amy Moore and Tia Warsop added singles.
With the total now at 17, there was another deliberate out to bring the inning to an end, and a few minutes later, the game was over.
Looking ahead
GB will have only one game on Monday as the second round gets under way, and it will be against Germany at 3.45 pm local time (2.45 pm in the UK) at the competition's fourth venue at Gava. GB played Germany in a warm-up game on Friday and won 6-2, so will be hoping to at least repeat that result.
Things will get tougher after that, with games against Ireland and Israel on Tuesday – GB lost to Israel when the teams met in a warm-up game on Saturday – and then against Italy and France on Wednesday. To get through to the next Championship playoff round, GB will have to win at least three of those five games, and winning four of them would make progression much more certain.
Also, because results of games played against teams played in Pool E will be carried forward as results in Pool X, it will be difficult to get to a medal game if more than one loss is carried forward.
All GB games during the tournament will be webstreamed, and the broadcasts can be accessed on https://www.youtube.com/wbsceurope for free or on ESport Plus.
Game reports will be posted each day on this website.
Photos by Chris Knoblock