Successful Preparations Lead into CEB Tournament
Posted on 12 July, 2011 by kcorona
It has been an adventurous past two weeks training the Serbian Junior National team in preparation for the upcoming CEB Qualifier Tournament for the European Championships to be held in Belgrade. The Serbian team is young, inexperienced, and lacking in formal coaching but they have one key ingredient: spirit. After a four-day practice camp held in the eastern Serbia village of Gamzigradska Banja with the assistance of Major League Baseball International envoy coach, Bill Percy, the young players began looking like ball players. Every drill from the start of practice improved such as playing catch, there were more hits in intersquad games, flyballs were being caught, and runners were sliding at bases.
This past weekend the Junior National team competed in a tournament in the Italian city of Castions delle Mura in northern Italy. After seemingly forgetting everything they learned while in Gamzigradska Banja in the first game where they lost 7-2 to host team “Europa”, the young team bounced back winning the next four games straight to lead to a third place finish. This tournament was used as a preparatory tournament for the Qualifier Tournament that begins Monday in Belgrade.
The tournament in Belgrade will feature Slovenia, Croatia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Switzerland, and Serbia. Each day Serbia will play at 5:00 p.m. opening up with Slovenia on Monday. On Saturday July 23rd the championship game will be played between the two teams with the best record from the round-robin week play. Check back this coming week for daily updates.
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