Tournament and Clinic in Lugansk, Ukraine, April 12-15, 2007

Ukrainian softball club Nika Lugansk has organized their international tournament called Shigalevski Cup in the middle of April. President of the club, Mr Vasiliy Kysil invited me to observe, help and give some clinic to pitchers, coaches and umpires.

There were 6 teams participating, two from Russia – Kalita team A and B, two from Lugansk – Nika A and B, Kirovograd and Doneck. Level of play was not bad, Kalita finally won the Trophy beating Lugansk in the grand final. Umpiring was not bad either eventhough they had unfortunately only three umpires, so the work they had to do was tremendous.

We did not organize special clinic for three umpires, my help was more similar to UICs work - to observe  umpires, making notes and discussing them after the games. As mentioned, level was quite good, so we have discussed smaller details, special rules like interference x obstruction and some differences in mechanics and positioning of umpires during the game.

Coaches and Pitchers Clinic.

First part of the clinic was organized on Friday evening after the games in the classroom (Nika is University team) and was focused on proper fundamentals and basics of pitching. We could use dvds, photos, therefore we talked at the end also about promotion and current technological help.

On Saturday we stayed on the field after the games and talked about drills. I have also added some comments about details from my observation of all pitchers participating on the tournament and advices.

Since the clinic was focused on pitching as requested by local organizers, we did not spent much time with other aspects of the game. But during four days tournament I had several oportunities tu speak with some coaches or players about hitting, bunting and defensive plays.

Besides coaching and umpiring I could provide also some equipment help: Thanks to LUISVILLE company represented by Mr. Vavrusa in Czech Republic I brought 8 softball bats – one for each team plus two for local organizers and also I could oficially confirm another 5 Starter kits from ISF prepared for Ukraine – currently it is stored in Prague and waits for them to pick it up. Ukrainian Softball considers seriously to send the team to European Championship U15 Girls in Pilsen, Czech Republic, this summer. This could be good oportunity not only pick up the ISF equipment but also continue on cooperation. One of the discussed posibilities was to ad myself or other Czech coach to staff of Ukrainian team there.

Local difficulties. Ukrainian softball has several serious problems with development of this sport. Firstly, like many other eastern european countries it is economical situation, players, teams or schools are not able to buy their own equipment and depend very much on outside help. Size of the country creates another problem – the closest team to Lugansk is Kirovograd, which is 650 km far ! And capital Kiev is aproximately 800 km. Besides, Ukrainian Baseball and Softball Federation is combined and, like in other european countries pays more attention to baseball. There are not regular softball diamonds there, most of the games are played on soccer fields. And last, but not least, not many people speaks English. My russian is not very good, but finally we could communicate pretty well I guess. This all together leads to kind of isolation from European and World softball community. In general there is not strong area in numbers, some big cities have only one club each (Kiev, Lugansk, Doneck, Kirovograd). There is only 6 or seven softball teams in the whole country.

Future Development. We have discussed with Mr Kysil and later also with other representatives in Kiev several ways to help softball in Ukraine. Besides equipment support and promotional, instructional and games videos (I gave them all I had) we should try to organize another clinic off-season for lets say one week for all coaches and players. Another chance is to send the coach there for longer period (half season or season) which could work with the teams and the players in a long term. We could try to find some ukrainian community in US or Canada, and connect them with local softballers. They might be interested to participate on help to their original country. I have also discussed the chance to split softball and baseball and start mens or boys program. At least some of the teams there are already independent from baseball (Nika Lugansk), but they need to start boys as well to built stronger clubs. That is the way they go now in Russia after spliting – the russian team Kalita has already started with boys, similar to biggest russian club Carrussel.

Ukrainian Baseball and Softball Federation is going to have annual meeting in few weeksand and wants to discuss all these matters.

I like to thank to Mr Vasilyi Kysil and all members of his club for the great hospitality and I hope we will stay in touch and continue on helping their development of softball.

Pavel Prachar

European Development Facilitator

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