Northern Teams Capture B and C Co-ed Nationals

Northern teams took the top prizes at the 2006 B & C Co-ed Slowpitch National Championships, played in warm sunshine over the weekend of September 9-10 at Keele University in Staffordshire. The weather made a pleasant contrast for players who had competed at last year's B & C Nationals at the same venue and were subjected to a weekend-long barrage of wind, rain and mud.

Jammy Dodgers from Manchester won the C Nationals Final by 10-6 over the Creamers from Bristol in a fairly low-key game in which the two teams combined to commit 12 errors, leading to a number of unearned runs. It was the second C Nationals title in four years for the Mancunians, who broke open a tight game with five hits and four runs in the fifth inning and never looked back.

The B Nationals Final was a much livelier affair, played before a large and enthusiastic crowd, and it was a game full of scintillating defensive plays by both the Nottingham Pyros and their opponents, the London Spirits. But on the offensive side, the fired-up Pyros simply blew the Spirits away after the first two innings and the game was eventually halted in the bottom of the sixth on the mercy rule when Pyros had run the score to 19-4.

But though teams from Northern leagues took both main trophies, the Championships weren't all bad news for London and the South, as Southern teams took the majority of plate and placing positions in a tournament cleverly formatted by BSF Tournament Officers Liz Graham and Lesley Morisetti to give more teams more to play for.

Although 18 teams went into pool play in the B Nationals on Saturday with an equal chance of lifting the title, the tournament was split after the first day, with eight teams going forward to the Gold Tournament to compete for the Main Trophy and the Gold Plate while the remaining ten teams split into two more round-robin groups to compete for both Silver Cup and Plate trophies.

In the C Nationals, where 10 teams went to the starting post and played an initial round-robin with two groups of five, the top six teams from the round-robins went forward to compete for the Main Trophy, while the other four teams fought out a Plate competition.

A full list of teams winning trophies and players winning MVP awards can be found at the end of this story.

Single-Sex Nationals Showcases Regional Strength

Teams from Edinburgh, Manchester, the East Midlands and Oxford shared the honours at the 2006 Single-Sex B & C Slowpitch Nationals, held on July 22-23 at a new, large and promising venue, the Grove Farm Sports Ground in Nottingham.

The competition featured 22 teams – five each in Women’s B, Women’s C and Men’s C, with seven teams competing at Men’s B level. The weekend was filled with close games, good Softball and a wild variety of weather, ranging from thunderstorms through cold, drizzle, humidity and heat, and the good humour that you usually find at this level of Softball was in evidence throughout the tournament.

All four divisions provided a high standard of play, but in the women’s competitions, the superior teams were just that little bit better than the rest. The Thistles from Edinburgh went through the double-round robin in the Women’s B tournament undefeated – though three of their wins were by a single run – and then pulled away from the London team No Balls to take the final fairly comfortably by a score of 11-5.

Meanwhile, in the Women’s C Tournament, the Bluebelles from Oxford were similarly undefeated in pool play and ran out relatively easy winners over Nessies from Edinburgh in the final, 16-6.

The two men’s competitions, however, were a different affair. No one escaped pool play without at least one defeat, and both men’s finals were tremendous games, each finishing with the winning run scored in the bottom of the seventh inning, and the same final score: 13-12.

In the Men’s B final, it was E.M. Pulse from Nottingham who broke a 12-12 tie with the winning run in the bottom of the seventh to defeat the Tartan Army from Edinburgh; while in the Men’s C Final, the Butchers from Manchester came from two runs down going into their last at-bat to edge out the Exiles from Nottingham by that same 13-12 scoreline.

There was also a tournament within a tournament over the weekend, as teams from Northern and Scottish leagues competed in the first Northern Challenge Cup, with points determined by the results of games involving teams from Edinburgh, East Midlands/Leeds and Manchester. Edinburgh were the easy winners with 33 points, followed by East Midlands/Leeds with 19 and Manchester with 14. Judging by this result, plus the number of Edinburgh teams competing in finals, the quality of Softball in Edinburgh is clearly on the rise.

Created on 03/01/2007 10:14 AM by liz Updated on 03/01/2007 01:32 PM by liz

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