2009 MVP Winners

The MVP's for this year were announced at our annual party on Saturday.

2009 MVP's:

Male - Colm
Female - Angelica

Pictures to follow...

2009 MVP Nominees

The nominations for this years MVP are as follows, if you're eligible to vote this year then you have already been notified. Voting is open now and closes at midday on Wednesday 16th September so get your votes in now.

2009 IOST Review

Unusually for us we started Saturday morning in great form winning both of our first two games! We won two of the following four games too leaving us with a great days result of four wins from six games on Saturday.

The four wins on Saturday meant that for the third year running we managed to qualify for the plate competition. We only managed to win one of our three plate mini league games which unfortunately meant that we didn't qualify for the plate final but we played really well just to get that far.

Thanks again to everyone who made the trip to Cork and made it a great weekend, I hope all of those that are a bit sore (and those that are more than a bit sore!) this morning feel better soon. If anyone took any pictures then pass them on and I'll put them in the gallery.

Galway Tribes win Castleknock Recreational Title

Just a quick update to let everyone know that last Saturday after 3 consecutive unsuccessful finals we managed to win the tournament last Saturday. Colm also won the tournament MVP award.



A more detailed report and the rest of the pictures will follow

Provisional 2009 Tournament Schedule

Details of tournaments we have lined up, including a new Limerick tournament.

1. Castleknock Invitational Sat 18th July
See: here for details
If you haven't already done so can you let me know yes/no if you would like to go to this, we would like final numbers by next week.

2. Irish Open Softball Trophy, Sat/Sun August 15/16, UCC, Cork.
Full details of this to follow. For those who don't know, this is the big tournament in Ireland, up to 34 teams take part from Ireland the UK and Europe. Again please let me know as soon as you can if you haven't doen so already if you intend going or not to this.

3. Cash Ball Tournament, Sept (exact dates TBD), UL, Limerick.
This announcement is preliminary but it looks like this will take place. This is run by the Munster Softball Team. Details are attached.

Castleknock Softball Club Annual Invitational Blitz 2009

Saturday 18th July 2009, St. Brigids GAA Club, Russell Park, Castleknock

View St Brigids GAA - Softball in a larger map

Castleknock Softball Club incorporating Castleknock Bearcats and Castleknock Wildcats softball teams would like to welcome all teams to our annual tournament.

Coffee and tea will be available throughout the day free of charge.

All teams will be placed in either the Bearcats or Wildcats competitions in consultation with team captains in order to create a fair and balanced playing field. Both tournaments will be played 6-4 co-ed.

With up to 12 teams taking part and a limited number of softball diamonds available it is very important that all games start and finish on time. The first round of games start at 10am sharp.

All games will be 50 mins long with no new innings after 45 mins. Games will begin with a 1:1 count.

We would ask any umpires playing in the tournament to make themselves available to umpire a game when not playing. Otherwise the team batting umpires. In all cases the Umpire's decisions are final.

Lunch break is between 1.00 and 2.00pm. Hot food will be served. There is also a café serving hot and cold food in the garage beside the grounds.

Changing facilities and showers will be available.

As with tradition we are hoping that many of you will join us for a few drinks in the bar and the presentation of our prizes to our 2009 Tournament Champions.

Could we ask all teams to respect that we have the use of a great facility in St. Brigids and keep the grounds free of litter etc.

Finally we hope you all have a great day.

We will be sending a team to this so if you are interested in going let us know as soon as you can.

Update

1. There will be no softball this Saturday. We may try to get Saturdays going again especially in lead up to tournaments, interest permitting.

2. As Wednesdays are finally starting to get going properly with adequate numbers showing, we should try to introduce any possible new players. If anyone know of anyone who may like to join try and get them to come next Wednesday, if we have a few people we can take them aside for first while and ease them in.

3. We have been invited again to Castleknock Invitational tournament in Castleknock, Dublin on Sat July 18th. If you would like to go to this can you let me know soon as you can, thanks.

4. Also August15/16 is the IOST, the big tournament of the summer. This year this will take place in Cork, UCC grounds. So try and free this weekend up if you plan to go, will be looking for numbers soon.

Galway Softball Open Day June 10th

If you're interested in playing softball with us in Galway then come along to our open training session on June 10th. If you don't know what softball is but would like to find out then come along and we'll show you.

June 10th is the open day where we're aiming for as many of the new people that have already expressed an interest to come along and let us show you what its all about. The 10th is just our open day you can start coming to our training sessions at any time, the schedule is on the panel on the right side of this blog.

Softball is the co-ed, slower and more sociably paced version of baseball. A note tho the ball itself is not soft, in fact its quite hard! See more information on softball in Ireland here.

The second (and most important part) of training takes place in the Bierhaus immediately after training every Wednesday

Wednesday training starts the week

Just a reminder that training will start this Wednesday at 6.45 in the usual place.

As everyone agreed in our survey last year we're going to try to structure training a bit better this year with more specific drills to start with and then the usual game after.
We'll try to do a few short drills in the first half hour and then play our usual game until it gets too dark (which will be early enough for the first few weeks!!)

I would ask everyone to be at training at 6.45 so we can be ready to start at 7 sharp. We need to organise the drills differently depending on how many people we have so its important to have everyone together for the start. We are also going to limit the amount of time on the drills for the first few weeks so that we can play a proper game.

See you all Wednesday and don't forget to bring along new people if you can.

Temporary Trophy!

Here's a picture of the prize we won last weekend!!
I'll post a picture of the actual trophy when we get it

UL Intervarsity Review - Galway win Bowl Trophy

This tournament took place last Weekend 28/29 March at the University of Limerick.

This year 6 teams took part:

Limerick Ori-ginals:
UL 55's
UL DT's
UCD 1
UCD 2
Galway Tribes

We arrived up Saturday morning and straight into play. We put in a good performance in teh first game losing 12-20 against the eventual winners, the Orig-inals.

The gale force winds didn't help us in the next 2 games where we played UCD1, losing 0-20 and UL'55's losing 3-25.

The final 2 games on Saturday were very close and we probably should have won both, a bad inning in each game cost us, losing 10-14 against UL DT's and 18-19 to UCD2 (A game in which we led 16-5).

So we went 0-5 for Saturday but did not play too badly and we had a certain amount of confidence going into day 2.

We went out to bar close to hotel and watched the IRL v BUL match and had a good night afterwards.

The 5th and 6th place teams were to contest the Bowl final on Sunday. This was to be a best of 3 game series against UCD2.

After a late night and having to rely on public transport, the opposition didn't make it in time for the first game so we got a walkover. But thankfully they made it for the second. We controlled this game pretty much all through and eventually ran out winners 19-8 with some very good defence and big hits, including a grand slam from Simon, therefore winning the bowl.

Some of us waited for final and presentations following. The final was won the the Ori-ginals over the 55's, this was an exiting game which was won in the first extra inning.

Due to some confusion, the Bowl trophy was locked in a cabinet somewhere (I believe its a nice crystal trophy) so we had to accept a cereal bowl in its place. We will get the proper trophy in due course.

Thanks to everyone who played (See squad in last post).

Squad for UL Iintervarsity March 28/29

Here is the provisional squad for the tournament in UL next weekend.

Simon (Sun Only)
Kevin
John
Tommy
Evan
Brendan
Andrew

Angelica
Suzanne D
Suzanne L
Paula
Jacinta
Orla
Catherine

2009 Season officially underway

Just to let everyone know that we had our first training session of 2009 on Saturday

Unless the weather makes things completely unplayable we'll definitely have training again next Saturday as we have a tournament (and a trophy to defend!) the following weekend

UL Intervarsity 2009

The UL Intervarsity will take place on March 28/29 2009 in UL, Limerick.

Last year the "Galway Hookers" won the plate competition and it is important that we defend our title.

We hope to send at least one team to this, so please sign up if you are interested.

Training Schedule 2009

Training for 2009 will commence on the following dates:

Saturdays from March 7th, 12:30pm.
Wednesdays from April 8th, 6:30pm.

Venue: Laurel Park, Newcastle, Galway.

Hope to see you all there...