FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 10, 2006

WHO WILL QUALIFY?
World Championship Starts in 17 Days

Sixteen countries qualified for the International Softball Federation (ISF) XI Women’s World Championship, August 27-September 5 in Beijing, China. Now they’ll all be looking to qualify again – this time for the 2008 Olympic Softball competition.

The top four finishers at the upcoming event (or top five if 2008 host China comes in anywhere from first to fourth place) will secure a berth in the Games that will take place two years from now. Below is a recap of how each team got to softball’s marquee event of 2006, which marks the debut of the new venue that has been built for the 2008 Olympic Softball competition. (The world championship is also serving as the sport’s Olympic Test Event.)

NOTE: The complete game schedule for the women’s world championship is available online here.

AUSTRALIA will certainly have a bigger challenge on their hands in Beijing than they did in getting there. A qualifier did not take place for Oceania, so the 2004 Olympic Softball silver medalists will go to this month’s event with the experience from more recent events they’ve participated in, such as the Canada Cup (which they won) and the II World Cup of Softball.

BOTSWANA, on the other hand, secured a spot in the XI Women’s World Championship via the African qualifier that took place in Zimbabwe last December. Botswana also has experience from qualifying events such as the 2003 Africa/Europe Olympic qualifier, which included a confidence-building, come-from-behind 7-6 win over France.

Just a few weeks prior to the African qualifier for the Women’s World Championship, the VI Pan American Softball Championship for Women wrapped up in Guatemala, where CANADA clinched a spot in this month’s tournament thanks to a silver medal finish. They battled USA in the gold medal game, losing a close game, 2-0, but certainly making a statement that the program was a true contender.

As the host country, CHINA has an automatic berth, but would’ve gotten in anyway because of their third place finish at the 8th Asian Women’s Softball Championship in December 2004 in the Philippines. At that event, China went undefeated in Preliminary Round play before dropping both of their playoff games.

The second playoff loss by China was to CHINESE TAIPEI, who went on to finish second at the 8th Asian Women’s Championship. Chinese Taipei went 6-2 at that event, with five of their six victories coming by shutout. Both of its losses were to Japan, so the August 27 game between those two teams should certainly be one to watch.

At the VI Pan American Softball Championship for Women late last year in Guatemala, COLOMBIA earned the final spot in Beijing from the Americas by finishing fifth out of 14 teams. In the process, Colombia also booked themselves a spot in next year’s softball competition at the Pan American Games in Rio.

DPR KOREA qualified for their first ISF Women’s World Championship by coming in fourth place at the 8th Asian Women’s Softball Championship in December 2004 in Manila. It was no small feat as that event had twelve teams participating. DPR Korea turned heads in Preliminary Round play, going 4-1 and outscoring their opponents 48-12.

Having finished fourth at last year’s European Championship, GREAT BRITAIN didn’t actually become a part of the 2006 Women’s World Championship picture until they were given an at-large berth this past March. The top three finishers at the European event a year ago in the Czech Republic were the ones to automatically qualify for Beijing. The British team was 4-4, although two of their losses were by just two runs each.

The second place finisher from Europe – and one of the teams that gave Great Britain one of its losses by more than two runs – was GREECE, who qualified for their first-ever ISF Women’s World Championship appearance. The Greek softball team built on their big debut at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, beating Italy last year, 2-1, in eight innings, before dropping the rematch, 5-0, giving Italy the title, Greece second place, and both teams a spot in Beijing.

ITALY can’t rest on its laurels however. Although they won the XIV Women’s European Championship to secure their sixth straight ISF Women’s World Championship appearance, some games from one year ago will stick out, like the extra innings loss to Greece and a reversal of that the next day when they beat the Netherlands, 2-1, in eight innings. Other opponents, however, will fear the Italy team that won its first five straight games last year.

The reigning champion from the Asian event in the Philippines 20 months ago is JAPAN, who blanked Chinese Taipei, 5-0, for the title. Amazingly, the Japanese won all seven of their games there, with an average margin of victory of over 12-0. With Chinese Taipei being the only team in Japan’s pool in Beijing, however, the test will come for Japan in games against teams they haven’t faced much before, if at all.

One team that was putting others to the test was the NETHERLANDS, who finished third at the European Championship in 2005. They not only missed out on a trip to the Grand Final by virtue of their extra inning loss to Italy – who they’d lost to by just one run two days earlier – but rained on some parades with performances like an 8-2 win over Great Britain and a solid 5-1 win over Russia. The Dutch also had two one-run losses, one of those being another extra innings game.

As noted with Australia, no Oceania qualifier meant that NEW ZEALAND would be back for another ISF Women’s World Championship. While the team has been participating in some competitions, it’s the off-field developments that have been making news, such as the roster being brought to this month’s event featuring only six faces that were on the White Sox team that finished sixth at the last ISF Women’s World Championship (2002 in Saskatchewan).

At the African qualifier last December in Zimbabwe, SOUTH AFRICA made it back to their third straight ISF Women’s World Championship. They won’t be in the same pool as Botswana in Beijing, so they will be tested by seven opponents who they likely won’t have faced in quite some time, perhaps dating back to the 2002 edition of this event.

The winners of the VI Pan American Softball Championship last year in Guatemala, the USA team also comes in as the defending ISF Women’s World Champion. Worth noting is that these title game victories have been nailbiters for the Americans, winning the 2002 gold medal game by 1-0 (over Japan) and then the 2-0 defeat of Canada just over eight months ago to clinch their spot in Beijing.

Finishing third, behind USA and Canada, was VENEZUELA, who just wrapped up a first place finish at the Central American & Caribbean Sports Games in Cartagena, Colombia on July 29. All of this activity can only help the team next year too, since their bronze medal last year in Guatemala not only qualified them for Beijing, but the 2007 Pan American Games as well.

Previous press releases on the ISF XI Women’s World Championship, including the July 27 announcement of the game schedule, can be viewed here. The official event website is http://www.2006softball.org/.

 

The ISF is the world governing body of the sport as recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF). Softball (women's fast pitch) made its Olympic debut at the 1996 Games in Atlanta. There are 130 affiliated countries in the ISF and millions of participants in the sport worldwide.

For more information, please contact ISF Director of Communications Bruce Wawrzyniak at brucew@internationalsoftball.com or (813) 864-0100, ext. 229.