Day: 8 March 2019

Julie Trundle representing Ireland.

IWD: Focus on Julie Trundle

Softball Ireland has a strong commitment to gender balance on its board with 50% or greater of the board being female since 2015.

This positive in governance extends further than just the Softball Ireland board to our Regional Associations also. Currently Fastpitch Ireland and Softball Ulster are led by female chairs with both following in the footsteps of Julie Trundle who was a forming member and long time driving force as Chair of Softball Leinster. In addition to chairing and driving the expansion of Softball in Leinster, Julie has been responsible for the re-introduction of Indoor Softball (twice) onto the Irish Softball calendar. 

Julie has not only driven change at the board level, Julie has been a member of the Softball Ireland Coed Slowpitch National team since 2004 and has traveled to many tournament around the world on club teams and everybody will agree that Julie has been a wonderful ambassador for our sport in Ireland, the UK and Beyond.

On this International Womens Day we thank Julie for her continued commitment to our sport!

IWD: Two Irish Players to attend MLB Cadet Camp

To coincide with the Boston Red Sox v New York Yankees series to be played in London in June 2019, Major League Baseball (MLB) are running a Cadet Camp targeted at high level young male and female athletes. The athletes to partake in the camp have been selected by BaseballSoftballUK and MLB.

The Camp will be an action-packed programme of specially designed daytime coaching, drills and game time, followed by evening talks, delivered by MLB and their expert coaches, covering both baseball and fastpitch softball.

Softball Ireland are delighted to announce that through our continued partnership with BaseballSoftballUK and in particular BSF Fastpitch, Fastpitch Ireland have accepted the invitation to nominate Irish Junior Internationals Caitlyne De Lange and Maeve Og O’Leary to attend the MLB Cadet Camp at the end of the May.

This is a unique opportunity for the two talented Players to spend a week practicing in such a high performance environment.

Softball Ireland & Fastpitch Ireland would like to express our gratitude to BaseballSoftballUK for providing an opportunity to include some of our athletes in this camp.

WNT Celebrates International Womens Day

Since Team 1 participated at the 2015 European Championships in Rosmalen, the Ireland WNT programme has continued to grow with 2018 being the most successful to date winning 2 European Championship medals.

Since the faithful Saturday morning in 2014 when the Director of Fastpitch, Melanie Cunningham, launched the discipline in Ireland the stated aim at that time was to create a profile for the sport at an national level and international level in order to create a catalyst for grass roots development in Ireland. Speaking at the Softball Ireland Annual General Meeting in November 2018, the development pathway of “top down – bottom up” was outlined to the membership with 2019 seeing the launch of a national Fastpitch league together with schools initiatives.

2019 is also the qualification year for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo with 4 weeks in July deciding which country will represent Europe at the Olympics in 2020. The road to Tokyo is very difficult but the Olympic dream is alive!

The pioneers of Team 1 started Ireland’s international odyssey against Austria on a cold and wet Sunday morning in July 2015, capping the week off with a memorable first ever victory against Israel.

On this International Womens Day, we thank all the players and coaches who have been part of this wonderful fastpitch journey to date and we look forward to teaching many girls into the future how to “throw like a girl”.