Lithuania Softball Federation takes off!
It is with great pleasure to announce the formation of the Lithuanian Softball Federation looking forward to be a full member of the ESF. The President of the LSA is Diana Pupininkiene.
Diana has been trying for years to make the Softball in Lithuania a household name. In 2013 the ESF Congress accepted the Lithuanian Baseball and Softball Federation among their members. In May 2014 the Lithuanian Baseball Federation unanimously decided to transfer softball sports rights and separate the national organizations. On December 19, 2014 the Lithuania softball federation was registered.
Diana expressed in a letter that although the creation of the joint World baseball softball Confederation (WBSC), whose main goal is to regain Olympic status from 2020, is important, however, sometimes at the different levels there are differences between the two sports interests, such as organized individual international tournaments, World and European championships, so that the objective for the division in Lithuania is so that the two sports have appropriate representation and are not canceling each other out.
The Lithuanian softball teams have been increasing their participation in international tournaments such as in 2012 the Lithuanian girls softball team took part in the Netherlands (Rosmalen) at the European Junior (U19) championship, invited to participate in the annual closed Swedish softball championship where they won two games out of six and played honorably in most of them
Beeball was introduced and an important visit by the ESF president Andre Van Overbeek helped the Lithuanians understand that there is a future for Softball in the country.
The success is moving forward and with this initiative Diana believes that they represent Lithuania and hope to glorify its name not only in Europe but also globally.
The LSA still needs to be offically voted in as a member of the ESF and of course the ISF will hopefully be looking at this soon as will the WBSC
Good Luck Diana!! Good Luck Lithuanian Softball!!
-ABar-
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