{"id":18250,"date":"2012-09-14T12:49:37","date_gmt":"2012-09-14T19:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/?p=18250"},"modified":"2012-09-14T12:49:37","modified_gmt":"2012-09-14T19:49:37","slug":"high-activity-ahead-for-mens-fastpitch-isf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/?p=18250","title":{"rendered":"High Activity Ahead for Men’s Fastpitch (ISF)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Click logo for the press release at official ISF website.<\/figcaption><\/figure>When the first game gets underway the day after tomorrow at a regional tournament in Colombia, it will start a run of six softball tournaments in the male discipline in the next six months. A seventh will follow not long thereafter.<\/p>\n

The event that starts this weekend is the VIII Pan American Men\u2019s Softball Championship, which will take place in the South American city of Medellin. The nine-day fast pitch tournament will be contested by Argentina, Bahamas, Canada, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. The defending Pan American men\u2019s champion is Venezuela, who defeated Canada in an extra inning in the gold medal game of the last edition of this tournament, which had taken place in Mexico.<\/p>\n

Next month (from October 25-28), the 9th Asian Men\u2019s Softball Championship will be held in Niimi City, Japan. The host team will be looking to successfully defend their Asian men\u2019s softball title, which they\u2019d won when they defeated the Philippines at the last edition of this tournament. Like the Pan American Championship, the Asian event is a qualifier for the ISF XIII Men\u2019s World Championship, which will take place in March in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

First, though, the ISF IX Jr. Men\u2019s World Championship (19-and-under) will take place. That tournament will be held from November 1-10 in Paran\u00e1, Argentina. Fifteen teams \u2013 a record number of entries for this fast pitch tournament \u2013 are expected to compete in the venue that hosted the 1995 Pan American Games softball competition, albeit with recent upgrades. Australia is the current titleholder, having defeated Canada in eight innings in the gold medal game of the VIII Jr. Men\u2019s World Championship.<\/p>\n

The next two events will happen on back-to-back weekends \u2013 both in Florida \u2013 and are currently welcoming teams that wish to participate.<\/p>\n

An International Men\u2019s Fastpitch Tournament is being planned for January 17-20. The annual event will be played in 2013 in Altamonte Springs (near Orlando). Those interested can contact Alex Linares at intlsportsgroup@hotmail.com for more information and to enter. What started in 2000 with eight teams has swelled to 48 last year, when a club team from Canada won the title. For the January 2013 edition, more than 30 teams are already entered, coming from the Bahamas, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Venezuela, plus the USA men\u2019s national team will play as well. ISF Director of Umpires Bob Stanton will be on-hand as an umpire certification seminar will be held in conjunction with this tournament.<\/p>\n

As mentioned above, the attention for men\u2019s softball will not only swing to New Zealand in March, but heighten, what with the ten-day, marquee international fast pitch tournament taking place. The ISF expects the full complement of 16 teams \u2013 the maximum allowed \u2013 for the 13th edition of the world championship that was first played in 1966 in Mexico. Australia will be seeking to defend their first-ever men\u2019s world championship title, which they claimed with a victory over New Zealand in 2009.<\/p>\n

The worldwide softball community will then get some time to catch its breath before an under-21 men\u2019s event is held over six days in July in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Softball Canada is in the process of confirming international teams and is planning to eventually launch a webpage for the event.<\/p>\n

A footnote on additional men\u2019s play that would actually \u2013 combined with all those listed above \u2013 bring the total number of tournaments to nine, are two multi-sport Games that softball is on the programme of. Next month in Sydney, Australia, the 12th World Firefighters Games will take place over ten days, and softball again is one of the sports that will be contested. With that particular event, men\u2019s slow pitch is the discipline that gets played. And, next March, the 10th Central American Games will be held in Costa Rica. Men\u2019s (and women\u2019s) fast pitch is regularly a part of that event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the first game gets underway the day after tomorrow at a regional tournament in Colombia, it will start a run of six softball tournaments in the male discipline in the next six months. A seventh will follow not long thereafter. The event that starts this weekend is the VIII Pan American Men\u2019s Softball Championship, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-isf","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18251,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18250\/revisions\/18251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}