On a beautiful Saturday morning in Liverpool, 12 teams came to the North to celebrate LGBTQ+ inclusion with a day of softball!

After two round-robin groups, the Bobcats and Coyotes from Leeds, Tail Spin from Manchester and Screwballs from Liverpool came top to play for the Cup medals.

LSA Lightning from Lytham St Anne’s, the Liverpool Softball League team, Stingers and Rainbow Tigers from Manchester filled the middle bracket for the Plate medals.

Finally, the Spoon Medals were contested by Thunderbats from Leeds, Sluggababes from Manchester, B&T made of players from various cities and Kendal Softball playing their first ever tournament.

The entire day was played under beautiful conditions - with rainbows popping up throughout the day to enhance the theme!

The final standings were:

  1. Bobcats from Leeds - Cup winners
  2. Coyotes from Leeds
  3. Tailspin from Manchester
  4. Screwballs from Liverpool
  1. Stingers from Manchester - Plate winners
  2. Rainbow Tigers from Manchester
  3. The Liverpool Softball League team LSA Lightning from Lytham St Anne’s
  1. B&T from various cities - Spoon winners
  2. Sluggababes from Manchester Kendal from the Lakes
  3. Thunderbats from Leeds

Coach Linni Mitchell commented, "What a successful day. We’ve been working on this for a few months and to see it come alive in such fashion is very exciting. We had one team playing their first-ever tournament, and the atmosphere was brilliant, colourful, and exciting!"

BaseballSoftballUK Development Manager Luis Arrevillagas added, "This is the conclusion of this year’s LGBTQ+ tournaments - with events in Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool this year! We aim to add a new city every year and have interest from a num,ber of cities looking to host - the expansion of our LGBTQ+  tournaments this year has been fantastic. We want to encourage every league to host one in their town, and are happy to help!"

If you or your league wants to get involved in hosting a tournament or if anyone in your community wants to get involved to support LGBTQ+ committee with new ideas,  please contact Luis.