We're announcing National Champions from all over Europe.

CROATIA

Medvednica Mrki Medvedi are the 2018 Croatian softball champions!

Medvedi won the best of 7 series against SPAN with a final score of 4-1. It was the third trophy this season and with it they become champions for the fifth time in the last 6 years.

Things didn't start as planned though. Medvedi were confident with a lead of 1-0 in games before the start of the series. To clarify, the Croatian final series is played between the top two teams in the league, with the 1st ranked team being automatically ahead with a score of 1-0. With first game as the away team, Medvedi showed power at bat when they launched two 3-run homers in the top of the 4th inning to take a 9-3 lead. Inexplicably, after a comfortable lead thing just went sour, when SPAN mounted a slow comeback through errors in the defense, combined with the rightly timed hits. Eventually they took a 1-run lead in the bottom of the 6th inning which they maintained to tie the series to one game each.

The second game (or game 3, however you want to put it) came right after the first one as double-header was scheduled for the day. Medvedi again showed a lot of power launching a couple of homers in the process, and yet again we saw SPAN creating a comeback, this time in the top of the 7th inning. Just when things have seemed to be going down the same road again, Medvedi turned the game around with a 4-run inning powered by a 2-run homerun by Dario Guštin and a walk-off 2 RBI double by Matej Kamenski, taking back the 2-1 lead.

The next 2 games were scheduled to play on Saturday and Sunday. Medvedi were focused on not repeating the same mistakes they made in the first two games and they showed it by winning game 4 with a score of 16-8 in 6 innings, even after allowing 5 runs in the 1st inning. They quickly turned it around though, with a help of two moon-shot homers by Hrvoje Jerbić.

The fifth and final game was played on Sunday, even though the forecast was showing a storm all day long. However, the gods of weather allowed the full game to be played. SPAN once again took the lead in the first scoring three runs, and yet again Medvedi retaliated with a slow and steady comeback, finishing the game with a score of 10-4.

Medvedi showed a season-long domination by taking all the individual awards as well. The championship arrived behind the effective arm of this season best pitcher Matija Balent and best batter Hrvoje Jerbić who was also the MVP.