BSUK West Midlands Regional Development Officer Peter Evans reports:

Back in April, the softball landscape in the West Midlands was looking bleak with only two adult programmes in operation across the entire region. However, just a few months later, the scene is entirely different thanks to BSUK’s intervention programme based in Coventry.

Increasing the pool of coaching has been the key to the success. A partnership was formed between BSUK and the Coventry Blaze Ice Hockey Team which provided the area with the coaching services of Luke Fulghum, a native of Denver, Colorado. Luke, together with his wife Sasha, successfully completed a Level 1 training course to support Will Lintern, BSUK's Regional Coach. As a result, schools programme have flourished and generated ten more local coaches, who have subsequently grown the programme.

Success in Schools

The schools initiatives that BSUK has set up in the area have been vital to the success of the overall programme. After-school and weekend clubs provided enough work for us to keep our coaches gainfully employed and also attracted parents into the sport. This enabled Coventry to create its first adult softball team, the Tigers. This team is due to play Birmingham on August 7 in its first friendly game and will compete in both the forthcoming Leicester and Cirencester tournaments.

The Tigers Club also operate two other teams: the Coventry Rocks (for girls) and Coventry Cubs (for Under-12 and Under-16 age levels).

The Coventry Rocks Girls Softball Team operates out of Blue Coats School and is for Further Education (FE) students. The response has been overwhelming, with 25 regular players training every week, four of whom have also made the step up to the Tigers team. The Rocks, who designed their own game uniform of a striking pink and black, will be travelling to face Fakenham School in Norfolk in September.
 

Their captain, Ellie Smith, said:“We absolutely love the game. It’s fun and friendly but also competitive. Luke is a great coach and we have bonded into a really good team.”

More FE Activity

Blue Coats form one of two FE teams in the city since being joined by Woodlands Sports College. This will extend to four teams in September with the emergence of a huge programme at Cardinal Newman School.

Woodlands School provided the framework for this success as our coaches trained 12 teams for after-school intra-mural competitions that proved hugely successful. The Woodlands School has a “US-style” house system that creates a natural competition framework, and softball is now firmly embedded at Year 7 and 8 in the school.

In 2011 the programme will extend to Year 9 (adding another six teams) and baseball has also been used by the school to deliver BTEC sport qualifications, with BSUK's guidance. The school has provided two Level 1 coaches and is committed to adding two more to the programme in each of the next two years.

Plans and Targets

Cardinal Newman School is currently restructuring to a system that is similar to the Woodlands house system. It was so impressed with what BSUK delivered at Woodlands School that it has committed the entire 1,500-strong student body to the sport in curriculum PE in September. Four hundred of these students will then compete in 36 after-school teams in regular intra-mural competition throughout September and October.

This will bring the total number of participants to a figure representing 150% of our four-year target.

As part of this programme, the school has also committed 100 of their Year 12 FE students to two tournaments in October for eight teams. This will bring Coventry FE participation up to 12 teams by mid-October, and they will then be joined by two more Nottinghamshire College teams that are due to begin training on September 21.

This represents 88% of our region's end of Year 2 targets.

Adult Activity

Elsewhere in and around Coventry, the softball bug continues to spread. And with the Midlands programme now on target to meet or exceed its FE and schools targets for 201, the focus shifts to adult participation.

Warwick University staff begin training on July 29, to be followed by the Rugby Police Force on August 7. The police will be joined by a Fire Brigade team that will start training on August 10.

These three new adult teams will provide competition for the Tigers, and an Emergency Services league is planned for the near future.

Higher Education

The Coventry Higher Education (HE) programme will kick off in September 2010, with teams at Warwick and Coventry Universities who will be training for a March 2011 Varsity Match and league games later that summer. It has been a hectic summer to date, with both highs and lows. But overall the Midlands area has cut its softball teeth in Coventry and come out stronger.

Now Nottingham will benefit from an intervention based around an indooradult league during the winter months, with more to follow.

The targets set for us by Sport England are demanding and there are times when you wonder how they are going to be met. But we’ve been successful by continuously looking for innovative ways to get people involved. Coventry is a tough nut to crack, but once the word got around that our coaches are great at what they do, then our sport has created a good chance of finding its feet and delivering real change.