Zim to host Southern Africa baseball series

ZIMBABWE will play host to a baseball series against South Africa and other Southern Africa countries in December.

The event will be a follow up to the just ended series hosted by South Africa who dominated the proceedings.

Several countries from the region have been invited to the tournament.

The Zimbabwe women’s baseball teams are seeking financial help before the second leg of the South Africa-Zimbabwe Ladies Baseball series for the women’s Under-18 and senior teams.

With limited time to prepare for the inaugural edition of the Baseball Region Five World Cup qualifiers, the Zimbabwe baseball team travelled to South Africa just to participate in the games.

The team did well and booked itself a place for the Africa World Cup qualifiers after finishing second behind South Africa.

Nyaradzai Marijena who is the Zimbabwe Baseball Association scorer and also a coach, said that this was the first ever women’s baseball event which was hosted on the continent and it was a great honour to play against one of the best countries in Africa.

“This was the first women’s baseball event to be hosted by the continent and we are proud to have taken part in this inaugural tournament.

“Both our teams played second fiddle to South Africa in all our games but we take pride in learning from the best baseball playing nation on the continent,” said Marijena.

The head coach of the senior ladies team Eldon Mudzingwa said that although they lost, the lessons learnt from the tour are important in building their next challenge which is the second leg scheduled for December this year.

“The experience was the best, we gave South African teams a good run and a reason to come to Zimbabwe for the second leg of the series,” he said.

Mudzingwa said that like any other sporting discipline, they faced challenges in organising transport and accommodation for players.

“We are hoping to have trials across the country for both the Under-18s and the senior teams. This will give us another chance to identify talent and we are therefore appealing to individuals and corporates to suport us financially,” he said.

Mudzingwa said schools and parents have been funding the teams’ activities from camps to tours and in some cases players were meeting their own costs.

“This situation has at times forced us to travel with players that can afford the expenses instead of the best players,” he said.