Tuesday 28 June -- Head Coach Rachael Watkeys has today announced selections for the 2022 GB Senior Women’s National Fastpitch Team. The team 
will compete in the European Women’s Championship in July and will hope to win a medal to qualify for Group Stage competition in 2023 leading to the WBSC Women’s World Cup in 2024.
This year’s European Women’s Championship, to be held from 24-30 July in Sant Boi, near Barcelona in Spain, will be the first competitive outing for the GB Women since the summer of 2019, when the team won a bronze medal at the European Championship and then reached the final of the Europe/Africa Olympic Qualifying Tournament.
GB beat both The Netherlands and the Czech Republic on the way to the final but lost to Italy in the game that determined which team would go to the Tokyo Olympics.
Now, after three years of competitive inactivity, but with funding secured from UK Sport through 2024 in response to those 2019 achievements, the GB Women’s Team will see this summer as the first step towards their goal of qualifying for and winning a medal at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Training camp
To prepare for this year’s Europeans, the GB Women’s National Team will convene in the UK for a nine-day training camp. The team will be based at the Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre, home to many of the country’s national sporting teams, with access to the Centre’s sophisticated facilities. The squad will hold most of its outdoor training sessions at the nearby Farnham Park National Baseball and Softball Complex.
It will be the first time the GB Women’s National Team has trained in the UK since 2013, the year that Farnham Park first opened.
On the last evening before the team leaves for Barcelona, a celebratory meal will be held with officials from UK Sport, the British Olympic Association, BaseballSoftballUK and the British Softball Federation in attendance. A highlight of the evening will be the presentation of BSF Hall of Fame awards to GB Women’s Team Head Coach Rachael Watkeys and long-time GB player Amy Moore.
When the European Championship starts on Sunday 24 July, two players on the GB Team – US college Pitcher of the Year Georgina Corrick and pitcher and utility player Amie Hutchison – will have happy memories of their surroundings. The fields at Sant Boi are where the then GB Under-19 Team won GB Softball’s first and only European fastpitch gold medal, in the 2016 European Under-19 Women’s Championship, with Georgina Corrick pitching the team to a 1-0 win over Italy in the final.
Players and staff
The GB Women will take 16 players to the European Championship, and despite the three-year hiatus, eight of them (marked with as asterisk below) are returnees from the 2019 team.
The player selected are:
Sydney Brown*
Katie Burge*
Georgina Corrick*
Lauren Evans*
Rebecca Faulkner
Imogen Gie
Kimberly Hobson
Amie Hutchison*
Cameron McGinnis
Amy Moore*
Aubrey Peterson*
Morgan Salmon
Kendyl Scott
Tia Warsop
Chloe Wigington*
Jade Yerex
The staff will consist of:
Head Coach: Rachael Watkeys
Coach: Liz Knight
Coach (Hitting): Linda Derk
Coach (Battery): Mark Rigg
Head of Performance Systems: Gary Anderson
Team Operations Manager: Simon Mortimer
Sports Therapist: Kim Hannessen
Looking forward
Thanks to money received by the GB Women’s National Team from UK Sport’s National Squads Support Fund, the programme is now led by Gary Anderson, a highly-experienced Team Manager and Performance Director for a number of Olympic Sports, as Head of Performance Systems for BaseballSoftballUK, GB Softball and GB Baseball. Gary has been working hard since the beginning of the year with the senior national teams from both sports to improve their operations and their chances of Olympic qualification and success.
Gary said, “This tournament is the start of a very special journey for GB Softball, and all the staff and athletes have embraced the philosophy we have set. We are looking at a long-term strategy to elevate Great Britain in the world rankings, and it’s about the trajectory we have set and charting our progress with the aim to compete with the very best. We have assembled a squad that has a blend of experience and new emerging talent, a squad that will leave no stone unturned in the quest for medal success.”
Rachael Watkeys was voted into the BSF Hall of Fame earlier this year mainly for the success she has had with the Senior Women’s Team programme since she took on the role of Head Coach in 2016. Rachael said, “It has been a long time coming and we are very excited to finally be back in international competition and going to the Europeans in Sant Boi. We are very fortunate to have received funding from UK Sport, which provides us with the best opportunity to deliver on our goals and train together at world-class training facilities. We have a great mix of youth and experience in this side, which is not only exciting for the future but will hopefully put us into a medal opportunity again this summer.”
For more information about the GB Women’s Team during their 2022 European Softball Championship journey, follow GBWSNT on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, and at facebook.com/GBWSNT.
There will be daily reports from the European Women’s Championship on the BSF website, and games from the tournament will be webstreamed by Softball Europe. For links, go to: https://www.europeansoftball.org/competitions/detail/333.