The question of whether the GB Women's Fastpitch Team could take up its place at the 13th ISF World Championships this summer in Canada has been hanging in the balance ever since the team qualified last August at the European Championships in Italy.
The problem, of course, is money, with the team facing costs of almost £40,000 to compete in the World Championships in Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory and to prepare by competing the week before in the Canadian Open Championships near Vancouver.
With the January 27 deadline for registration fast approaching, and very little money in the bank so far from sponsorship or donations, Head Coach Hayley Scott and General Manager Bob Fromer posed a question to each of the 27 players in the GB Women's Team pool: if selected for the squad to go to Canada, are you prepared to pay up to £2200 so the team can cover its costs?
The fact that almost 20 players said yes was both surprising and heartwarming. It reflects the players' commitment to each other, the staff and GB Softball and, above all, how much they enjoy playing together.
For the veteran players on the team, many of whom have been in the GB programme for the past six years or more, the World Championships may represent their last chance to play together in a major competition. It's a chance they have earned by finishing second and third in the last two European Championships, thus qualifying for back-to-back World Championships for the first time in GB history. The team also played very competitive softball against the best teams in the world at the 2011 World Cup of Softball in Oklahoma.
All this has been achieved with no public funding, a tiny player pool and almost no opportunity to train together as a team, since GB Women's Team players are based in the UK, North America and elsewhere around the world.
Squad selection
With the team now definitely going to Canada, the next step will be for Hayley Scott and Assistant Coaches Celine Lassaigne and Megan Brown to select a 15-player competition squad.
The players selected will play in the Elite Division at the prestigious Canadian Open Championships from June 30-July 8, and then travel north to Whitehorse, near the Arctic Circle, for the 16-team World Championship event from July 13-22. GB will be seeded 11th, but the aim will be to make the playoff round and crack the world's top eight.
Along with the returning veterans, the team will probably contain several GB Junior players who will have a chance to make their mark before leaving the World Championships early to play in European Junior Championships, which begin July 23 in Antwerp, Belgium.
Looking for money
Meanwhile, the hunt for funding goes on. While it is sad and almost surreal that GB players should have to pay £2200 to compete for their country while most of their opponents will have government funding, anything that can be raised in sponsorship or donations between now and the summer will bring that amount down.
Straightforward commercial sponsorship is of course hard to achieve for a women's team in a minority sport in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.
When the team was in a similar situation before the 2010 World Championships in Venezuela, the problem was solved when the players won 16 free flights in a British Airways contest with the help of public votes and two businessmen with personal connections to team members donated a total of £90,000 between them. That money was enough, not only to get the team to Venezuela in 2010 but to cover most of the costs in 2011, when the GB Women played in the World Cup of Softball in America and the European Championships in Italy.
But the team started its campaign to take up its second straight World Championship place last autumn with empty coffers, and the situation has not improved much since.
An email campaign before Christmas asking members of the British softball community to donate £10 each resulted in only a handful of donations.
Meanwhile, approaches to a variety of companies and rich individuals have so far fallen on deaf ears.
Hope
But whatever happens, the GB Women's Team will be in Canada this summer, pitting their skill and wits once again against the best softball teams in the world. It may well be the last appearance for many of the team's longest-serving players, who are moving into a different phase of their lives.. But a promising group of GB Junior players is coming up behind them.
Small donations can still be made to the GB Women's Team through the Donate button on the Home Page on the BSF website.
Any leads or possibilities for larger donations should be passed on to GB Softball General Manager .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).