The Tribune

WITH the national high school tournament completed over the weekend, the Bahamas Softball Federation now switches its attention to the national round robin tournament this weekend.

Softball enthusiasts will congregate again at the Baillou Hills Sporting Complex as the federation hosts teams from its affiliated island associations around the Bahamas from Friday to Sunday when the men’s and women’s national champions will be crowned.

The Sunshine Auto Wildcats and the Commando Security Truckers had about a month’s break since they captured the New Providence Softball Association ladies and men’s titles respectively.

Teams from Grand Bahama, Abaco, Eleuthera and Andros are all expected to be in town, but federation president Ted Miller said they are still waiting on confirmation from Long Island and Exuma.

“We would expect a lot of stiff competition,” Miller projected. “With the exception of Alcott Forbes, we will have all of the top pitchers competing in the men’s division. So that should be very exciting.

“And on the ladies’ side, we know that New Providence and Grand Bahama are going to be the two teams to watch as usual. But over the years, teams from the other islands have been very competitive.”

The tournament comes with some controversy in the Eleuthera Softball Association where one of the men’s teams refused to continue playing in the championship after they were not able to obtain a financial statement from the league.

That team has since taken out an injunction to prevent the eventual winner from representing the ESA in the nationals. But Miller said having reviewed the documents, there is no reason why they should refuse the team from Eleuthera from participating. “It just don’t make much sense to me because the documents that I saw, they don’t pan out to an injunction,” Miller said. “It’s something that they will have to deal with after the nationals, but we don’t see no reason why we should deny their team from participating.”

This year, the federation was also hoping to complete the round robin here and take the men’s and women’s championship series to one of the Family Islands.

But Miller said they had to abort those plans after they were not able to secure the annual grant from the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture.

“Without the grant in hand, we didn’t have the funds to start setting the stage for the teams to travel next weekend,” Miller said. “The sponsors that we have, we are using it for the round robin.

“We sought and requested the grant from the Ministry a while back, but we can’t get an answer from anybody on whether or not they are going to give us the grant or not. I just need them to tell me something.”

As a result of having the grant, Miller said they will reconstruct the format for the tournament, which will be confirmed with the teams during the technical meeting at 2pm Friday before the competition starts at 4pm.

The tournament comes on the heels of the federation joining forces with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to host the first National High School Softball Tournament.

Formerly known as the Austin Knowles National High School Tournament, the organisers introduced the junior high school division where the Charles W Saunders Cougars prevailed with both titles.

The Queen’s College Comets carted off both senior high crowns.