By Bob Fromer
Oklahoma City, USA: 13 August – After four days of round-robin play at the WBSC Junior Women’s World Championships, the line-up for Championship and Placing Playoffs has now been determined, and play in both competitions will begin today.
The final standings in the round-robin pools turned out as shown below, with the top four teams in each pool advancing to Championship Playoffs and the others to Placing Playoffs, with both competitions coming to a climax on Saturday.
The GB Junior Women’s Team, which has played extremely well throughout the tournament so far, just missed out on the Championship Playoffs after Wednesday’s heart-breaking 2-1 defeat to China, and the task now is to see how high they can finish.
POOL A
Japan (6-0)
Canada (5-1)
China (4-2)
New Zealand (3-3)
GB (2-4)
Argentina (1-5)
Colombia (0-6)
POOL B
USA (7-0)
Mexico (5-2)
Czech Republic (4-3)
Puerto Rico (4-3)
Australia (3-4)
Chinese Taipei (3-4)
Italy (2-5)
Brazil (0-7)
Championship Playoffs
The Championship Playoffs are constructed as a double Page Playoff. But the Placing Playoffs are more complicated, starting off with quarter-finals among the Placing teams, but with losers from the Championship Playoffs getting involved further down the line.
Thursday’s games in the Championship Playoff are:
China v Puerto Rico
Czech Republic v New Zealand
Japan v Mexico
USA v Canada
The losers of the China v Puerto Rico and Czech Republic v New Zealand games will move down to the Placing Playoffs (a bit like third place Champions League group stage teams moving down to the Europa League).
The winner of China v Puerto Rico will play the loser of Japan v Mexico and the winner of Czech Republic v New Zealand will play the loser of USA v Canada, with these games taking place on Friday.
Placing Playoffs
Meanwhile, three Placing Playoff quarterfinals will take place today, with one team, Australia, getting a bye because there are only seven teams involved and, as the fifth-place team in Pool B, they had a better record than Great Britain, the fifth-place team in Pool A.
Today’s Placing quarter-finals are:
Argentina v Italy
Chinese Taipei v Colombia
GB v Brazil
The losers of these games will be finished. The three winners will live to play again on Friday, as follows:
- The winner of Argentina v Italy will play the loser of the Czech Republic v New Zealand. Call this PR4, as the official schedule does.
- The winner of Chinese Taipei v Colombia will play the loser of China v Puerto Rico. Call this PR5, as the official schedule does.
- Australia will come into the Placing Playoff at this point and will play the winner of PR4.
- Finally, the winner of GB v Brazil will play the winner of PR5. This game is scheduled for 6.30 pm local time on Friday (12.30 am Saturday in the UK).
The winners of those last two games will play at 1.00 pm local time on Saturday (7.00 pm in the UK) for the Placing Playoff title (and ninth place in the tournament).
Confused…?
All games from the tournament are webstreamed live on http://www.teamusa.org/USA-Softball/Events/2015/August/09/XI-WBSC-Junior-Womens-World-Championship/Media/Live-Streaming, and previous games are now available on demand.
