FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
24 June 2002

THE LUCKY SIXTEEN
Making it to the World Championships is an Accomplishment in Itself

This is the fourth in a series of eight weekly releases leading up to the International Softball Federation's X Women's World Championship, to be played July 26 - August 4 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, from which four teams will qualify for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. Today's feature looks at the makeup of a Women's World Championship's list of entries. (The first three releases in this series of eight can be viewed from the Press Releases page on the ISF's official website.)

This year's ISF Women's World Championship is the tenth one, having started in 1965, and been played every four years since the second WWC in 1970. The "things have changed since then" cliché is fitting considering the arc on the graph which plots the number of participating teams. In '65, five teams played. The total continued to grow, reaching 23 by the fifth WWC. It hit its peak in 1994 when 28 teams participated. Since softball became a part of the Summer Olympics at the Games of the XXVI Olympiad in 1996 in Atlanta, the ability to qualify for participation on the world's stage has added even more significance to this event. Thus the need was born to now qualify for the WWC too.

"Before we had the regional qualification system, the number of teams was getting so large that the competition wasn't so good," said ISF President Don Porter. "Plus, it was quite expensive for the organizers, so we changed the format to have a maximum of 16 teams. And certainly, the changes have also put more emphasis on the regional qualifiers, and that, in turn, gives more countries an opportunity to participate at less travel costs."

To formalize this, the ISF put in its code (Article 18.07) that, "All Fast Pitch World Championships will consist of no more than sixteen (16) teams."

A direct result of the change can be seen in Cuba and Puerto Rico, who will be participating this year, but didn't qualify for the last WWC, after having played in the previous two and three, respectively, when it was more of an "all-comers" tournament. Additionally, Russia, who had never before played in the Women's World Championship, was not slated to be at this year's event as a result of their final standing in the European Women's World Qualifier last summer. But, because they were the highest placed team in all the Regional Qualifiers (in essence, the 17th team), they were tapped to replace Botswana, who had to withdraw from next month's competition.

Qualification will continue to be the buzz word. While step one was getting to this event, step two is certainly qualifying for (one of four spots at) the Olympics. If that isn't accomplished in Saskatoon - and since Greece gets an "in" by being the host country - a step 2A of sorts will need to be taken, qualifying for one of the other three spots at another ISF event. Once the field of eight is set for 2004, step three is obvious.

The International Softball Federation, celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2002, is the governing body of softball internationally as recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the General Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF). The ISF organizes and conducts world championship competition in women's and men's fast pitch, junior women's and men's fast pitch, women's, men's, and coed slow pitch, and women's and men's modified pitch. Softball (women's fast pitch) made its Olympic debut at the 1996 Games in Atlanta. There are 125 affiliated countries in the ISF and over 40 million 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.