Report EDF from October-January Period to European Softball Federation

1. Office

EDF has set the office equiped with necessary equipment (computer, printer, phone, fax, copier), arranged headerpaper, bussiness cards and the website with contact and important info about development. This allows daily admin work and good possibility to be reached.

There was created and agreed systém of planning and reporting from EDF to ESF and ISF:

1. Monthly plans and reports
2. Period plan and report (3 – 5 months, i.e. fronm Congress to European Chamionship)
3. Year Plan – designed and  updated together with Dvelopment Commission ESF and its chairman M.Romeo from Italy  (now continues with G.Waage from Czech Republic)

2. Development database

Made two ways – electronic in Excel sheet and also as office files on paper. It only needs regular updatesand changes.

3. Federations/Associations

Several qustionaires sent and handed to get information from the countries and also inform them abou their possibilities. Contact with federations/associations is improving constantly.

4. Priority Countries

As planned in „Strategy, Objectives and Role“ document, we have started with group of countries from south-east (Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Greece, Slovakia, Turkey). There are planned basic clinics in most of them for the period of March-May. Another target group became later group of Nordic coutries – Sweden, Norway, Finland. Clinics there are planned together, also for April and May. There are three more countries added currently to basic clinic programs – Poland, Ukraine and Ireland.

5. Basic Clinic Program

There is 3 days basic clinic program designed which includes also basic umpiring and scoring, so it could be presented to school teachers and beggining coaches. The clinic will be done by two coaches/umpires from the group of top european coaches offered for this job (Stapleton, Prins, Rossati, Prachar, Magnani, Suss..). The basic clinic pogram could be adjusted to the conditions of particular country or federation/association from 2-4 days.

6. Other Clinics

There were several planned – pitching clinic in Prague (still on, but the date is not clear yet), junior camp by Czech Softball (unfortunately canceled. EDF cooperates with ISF on starting a new Elite program: NFCA clinics every year in Europe for top and national team coaches. First is planned to Prague at the end of October 2005.

7. Equipment

There are consults and coordination between ISF Development and EDF. The equipment donation program goes on very succesfully and helps all the countries. EDF has created store in Prague and ISF will send ther greater amount (100) starter kits and other equipmet (uniformes). The equipment will be than distributed in coordination between EDF and DC ESF and ISF Development. This will be cheaper and easier to operate within Europe.

8. Promotional materials

EDF has produced and built the stock with several promotional videos, both games and instructional (ISF) on DVD or sometimes on CD in mpeg format. The whole list of available videos is on EDF website.

Part of promo packages for clinics and schools are also several other promotional materials, such as booklets and powerpoint presentations. All these materials are copied for associations/federations and as a part of basic clinics organized in priority countries.

9. Men and Boys promotion

EDF cocentrates on promotion of our weaker categories, currently on promo of men and boys, mainly by giving out info and promo stuff especially to those countries or clubs where they do not know about it. This is also part of all promo produced and presented by EDF.

10. ESF/ISF

EDF helps development representatives and Executives from both organizations with any events which could help development of softball whenever they need – for example Olympic Survey for IOC at the end of last year or the special effort for Greece in order to maintain the venue in Athens.

11. General

So far everything goes well, communication and cooperation with ESF and ISF officers is great, all the preparational work is done, so we are moving into more action period – clinics and programs in particular countries.

Next period will be mostly filled with these and next report (summer 2005) will show how succesfull we are and how much (if) we shou modify track on which we have started the development program.