Softball Europe Hall of Fame welcomes four new members; two players - Rebecca Soumeru and Jesper Panduro, and two ESF TCs Libby Moss and Bob Kessler. The new members' induction into the Hall of Fame was announced at the ESF Congress in Vilnius, Lithuania, on February 8th, 2020. The celebrational induction will take place during the year on the field at some of the Softball Europe events.


Rebecca Soumeru - Dutch National Team Player


photo by Sascha Schneider

Rebecca has played for the Dutch national team since 1998. During that time she has been a rolmodell and friend foor many players all over the world and especially in Europe. Honest, humble, determined, nice, always looking out for others, cheering and supportive to her teammates, considered and interested in the (task) of the umpires and officials. Giving credit to others and never failing the Dutch national team with great performances. She has been able to win so many games for the Netherlands with her pitching, fighting spirit and positive mentality. Really a great top sportswoman. She was a part of the Youth National Temas 1998-2000, and she was on the senior Dutch National Team  2001-2019 (135 official international games). She played for Sparks Haarlem since 2001 with the exception of 2006 when she played for Macerata.

International events: 1 Olympic games (2008); 3 Olympic qualifiers (2003, 2007, 2019); 5 World championships (2006, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2018); 3 World Cup of Softball 2009, 2012, 2016); 1 World University Games (2004); 10 European championships (2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019) (4x champion); 4 Canada Cups (2001, 2005, 2006, 20009); 1 Japan Cup (2006); 1 Venezuela International Series (2010), and many more international and national tournaments.

Thank you, Rebecca!

Jesper Panduro - Denmark National Team Player

Jens Terkelsen’s Testimony:
"Jesper, better known as Jes – on the field, has been playing for many years. As an 18-year-old, in 1988, he was supposed to go to the World Championship in Canada. I was actually coaching at that time and a week before we were supposed to go, he called me that he had an accident on his scooter and couldn’t play. Since then, he’s taken a huge revenge, he’s been all around the World, in Venezuela, whole Europe, New Zealand, and so on. He’s been a huge asset; one of the main reasons why our men’s team has been doing so well.

Jesper is also a very nice teammate, I was lucky to have him as a teammate on the National Team especially. And of course, I played against him a lot of times and that wasn’t quite as nice :) . 

Now, he doesn’t play that much but every here and then he umpires, even our playoffs, so who knows, we might see him to continue his career as European umpire."    

Thank you, Jesper!


Robert Kessler - ESF TC from Israel

Testimony of Brian Aron (fighting tears when talking):

Over the last 25 years, Bob has been a dynamic presence at tournaments in Europe- as an umpire, a TC and a UiC, once he briefly also appeared on the scene with a club.

On a personal note; Bob found me in 1993 and I’ve been playing on his teams ever since. He’s the one that convinced me to start umpiring, he’s the one who convinced me to go to the ESF in 2005. He pushed me into management on a club level and on a national level."

Bob has inspired and influenced many to find time in their lives to invest in the development of our sport on various levels.

Thank you, Bob!

Libby Moss - ESF TC (+managing licenses) from Great Britain / Australia


photo by Rein Merkx

Testimony of Mike Jennings:

"Libby Moss, just like many in the European Softball world, started off on national bases, she was a secretary general of British Softball first and it was then when I accompanied her to my very first softball congress to San Marino.  

Libby then joined the ESF board, she was the Vice President for the period of 4 years and she also took the task of processing all the licenses. For many years, she got every single license application, every single competition, she produced the list of players for the TCs to check for all the TC meetings. A rough count of the number of licenses that processed is close to 16 thousand registrations. Which I think is a quite a record. 

Libby has not been in Europe for some time now, her mother was ill, so she returned to Australia. Each year for some six or seven years, Libby came over every year to Europe and TCd for us at least two tournaments. So she continued to make a contribution to the ESF even when she was no longer resident here."

Thank you, Libby!

The complete Hall of Fame of European Softball is here.