ON SATURDAY, THE Irish women’s softball team will take on Canada in the World Championships in Surrey, British Columbia.
Ahead of the competition, the hosts had a week of warm weather training in California before flying to Japan to take on some professional teams in Tokyo.
From there, they travelled to Oklahoma for another week of warm-up activities and games with the cost of all this activity covered by their national governing body.
Contrast that with Softball Ireland who — for reasons outlined later — receive nothing in the way of government grants and are limited to giving their team just €500 in funding.
That meant online fundraising campaigns and even supermarket bag-packing was required to get the team to Calgary.
But now they’re finally there, money is the last thing on their mind.
“If nothing else it’s quite a learning opportunity for the girls,” head coach Melanie Lavery told The42.
“It’s hard to keep saying how you need to do things over and over again and nothing else motivates you than seeing something being done really well and playing against a team like Canada, we’ll definitely see just how well the sport can be played.
“Of course, there is an issue with the sport here in terms of limited numbers, so to play other teams of quality we spend most of our time scrimmaging baseball teams, which is not the best solution but it is the only one we have.”
And that link with baseball is one that’s costing the team at the moment as Softball Ireland struggles to be recognised by the Irish Sports Council because the organisation want to lump them in with the overarm sport.
“It’s not ideal, obviously,” Melanie’s husband Colum — the president of Softball Ireland — also told The42.
“They’re two very different sports and, just because there is a bat and ball involved, doesn’t mean we should be considered the same as baseball. I mean you wouldn’t ask Cricket Ireland to come under the same banner would you?”
Despite signing a sponsorship deal with a kit supplier, it still cost Softball Ireland €7,000 for equipment this year while the Brexit vote — which caused a fall in the euro against the dollar — already means that the organisation’s sinking fund for the tournament has disappeared.
That doesn’t mean they’re not hoping to go far. First up on Friday they play Uganda and both Melanie and Colum believe it’s a game they can win.
While victory over Canada on Saturday would represent a massive upset, the pair also feel that, if everything goes their way, Sunday’s opponents — the United Kingdom — could also be there for the taking.
The team they hope can achieve those two wins is a mix of Irish, US and Canadian based players with a broad variety of athletic backgrounds.
“We’ve a good mix on our team age wise and background wise with nine girls born in Ireland and the rest are filling in from the US and Canada; heritage players if you will,” Melanie says.
“The mix we have here, a lot of them played rugby, one girl was on a football scholarship to a college in the US but she played for Ireland internationally and we’ve another girl who has played cricket with Ireland at an international level too.
“From an athletics stand point, it’s great to have a mix of sporting backgrounds but it is difficult to teach someone how to throw and catch because in camogie, while their hand-eye co-ordination is great, it’s not really a throwing sport so it’s tough for people to learn how to play and how to understand the mechanism of the throw.”
But how did Melanie end up coaching in Ireland in the first place?
“I grew up in the States and it’s something everyone plays and I first tried softball at the age of four. I’ve played ever since.
“In the States you have a system where you have — outside of school — town teams, county teams, travel teams, they’re all separate but it means you could be playing three, four, even five days a week, all summer long.
“I played in high school and my U18 team won the National Championships and I was fortunate enough to play in college too. After that I did a Masters and moved to Ireland which limited how much I could play.
“I discovered the sport here completely by accident because I was living here for about three years and I was just driving one day and spotted someone with a bumper sticker on their car for Softball Ireland and I slightly stalkerishly tail-gated that person until they stopped.
“When they got out I said ‘I know this is going to sound really strange but what’s that all about’ and they told me about the website, I looked it up and found a team.
“Back then they only had ‘slow pitch’ softball, the co-ed version of the sport, and I was involved in that since 2005 and then, two years ago, Colum was talking about starting a fastpitch team and I thought it was a great idea and the rest is history after that.”
This weekend, the Irish team have a chance to make more history. Given the obstacles they’ve already overcome, you wouldn’t bet against them.
