FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 30, 2004

ELITE/OLYMPIC-CALIBER PLAYERS IN NEXT MONTH’S
WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP IN PLANT CITY
Athletes That Competed in Athens To Play As Will NCAA Stars,
3 With Florida Ties, & More

Elite level talent will be on display for spectators in Plant City Stadium at next month’s 1st World University Softball Championship. The roster submission deadline for the ten participating countries was met with a collection of names whose softball résumés are fitting for such a marquee event.

At the softball competition in Athens, Greece last month, one of China’s pitchers was Lixia Zhang, who is on her country’s roster for the October 26-31 event in Plant City. And Chinese Taipei will be bringing five athletes that also competed on the world’s stage in August, along with three others that were part of the 20-person Chinese Taipei Olympic training team before the final 15 selection was made.

Three of the players on Canada’s roster were selected as alternates for that country’s 2004 Olympic team. Tamra Howren, Noémie Marin, and Shannon Rossiter were chosen for Canada’s final 20, from which Head Coach Mike Renney later identified the 15 that took to the field at the softball competition in Athens. With the Games in Greece now a thing of the past, the three will all head for Plant City next month.

The host country will be represented by the USA Elite Team, which is made up of five members from 2004 NCAA Women’s College World Series Champion UCLA and other NCAA All-Americans. The USA Elite Team is the last team to defeat the U.S. Olympic team. The UCLA players include Caitlin Benyi, Lisa Dodd, Andrea Duran, Jodie Legaspi, and Emily Zaplatosch. Infielder Vicki Galindo, who will also be in Plant City, played for the Cal team that lost to UCLA this past May. Among the All-Americans are Tennessee’s Monica Abbott, who led the nation in strikeouts and wins, and exactly one year ago in October won a silver medal with Team USA at the VII International Softball Federation (ISF) Jr. Women’s World Championship (19-and-under) in Nanjing, China.

Australia’s roster boasts pitcher Aimee Murch and Lauren Daykin from Lynn University (Boca Raton, Florida) and Okaloosa-Walton College (Niceville, Florida), respectively, adding a “closer to home” element to the championship. And, exactly one year after playing on Australia’s bronze medal-winning team at the Jr. Women’s World Championship in Nanjing, pitcher Jocelyn McCallum comes to Plant City seeking a medal at the World University Softball Championship.

The roster for the team from the Netherlands also includes an athlete from a Florida school. Joyce Roodenburg currently plays at Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City. The other countries competing in next month’s event are Guatemala, Japan, Russia, and Uganda, the latter boasting four players who competed last October at the All-Africa Games (also called the “African Olympics”).

All athletes are required to be between ages 17 and 28 and to have not been out of university or its equivalent for more than a year.

Admission to Plant City Stadium will be free, with a nominal $5.00 per car parking fee only.

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