 | This article needs to be updated.(May 2022) |
The Canada Cup is an annual international women's softball tournament held at the Softball City Complex in South Surrey, British Columbia.
| This article needs to be updated.(May 2022) |
The Canada Cup is an annual international women's softball tournament held at the Softball City Complex in South Surrey, British Columbia.
Following an announcement on June 13, 1991 by the International Softball Federation that women's fastpitch was being made a full-medal sport at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the Canada Cup was created to provide the Canadian national softball team with a world calibre team competition in order to help prepare for Olympic qualifying.
Over the years, the Canada Cup has evolved into one of the most prestigious international softball tournaments. Today, the competition is split among four separate tournaments:
Although a number of US and Japanese club teams have competed in the Canada Cup, the showcase event has evolved primarily into a national team competition between the following countries:
This tournament enjoys strong local support with hundreds of community volunteers. Each team is assigned a bat girl from one of the local teams plus a family support liaison from the community. Another unusual part of this tournament is the concurrent co-ed Slow-Pitch Friendship Division tournament for developmentally disabled adults which is run at the same site as the premier International Women's Fastpitch tournament. You can watch both at the same time.
| Year | Champions | Runners-up | Attendance |
| 1993 | Redding Rebels | 43,968 | |
| 1994 | Redding Rebels | 56,829 | |
| 1995 | California Commotion | 70,108 | |
| 1996 |  Canada | 79,136 | |
| 1998 |  Australia | 95,869 | |
| 1999 |  United States (Gold) | Australia | 100,419 |
| 2000 | Australia |  China | 109,814 |
| 2001 |  Japan (Red) | Australia | 110,346 |
| 2002 | United States (World) | United States (Elite) | 122,504 |
| 2003 | United States (Elite) | Australia | 113,916 |
| 2004 | Japan | Australia | 91,201 |
| 2005 | Australia | United States (Elite) | 105,856 |
| 2006 | Australia | Canada | 112,676 |
| 2007 | United States | Japan | 119,301 |
| 2008 | Japan | Australia | 102,647 |
| 2009 | United States | Canada | N/A |
| 2010 | Cancelled | ||
| 2011 | United States | Japan | N/A |
| 2012 | Japan | United States | N/A |
| 2013 | Japan | Australia | N/A |
| 2014 | Japan | United States | N/A |
The Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival is an annual festival of dragon boat races in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Begun in 1994, the festival attracts 5,500 paddlers, 200 teams and over 75,000 spectators from all around the world. It is one of the largest dragon boat festivals in North America. The event is held in Mooney's Bay, where the Rideau River and Rideau Canal split. Mooney's Bay is where many of the Ottawa-based teams train, using the Rideau Canoe Club facilities. The festival was most recently held in 2019. The 2020 festival was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
USA Baseball is the national governing body for organized baseball in the United States, and is a member of the United States Olympic Committee and the World Baseball Softball Confederation. The organization selects and trains the World Baseball Classic, Olympic, Premier12, and Pan American Games teams ; the USA Baseball collegiate national team; the USA Baseball 18U, 15U, and 12U national teams; and the USA Baseball women's national team, all of which participate in various international competitions each year. In addition, USA Baseball selects players for the 14U, 16U, and 17U national team-development programs. The organization is responsible for the continued proliferation and health of the sport, and leads a number of amateur initiatives through its Sport Development department, including Play Ball and Pitch Smart. USA Baseball also presents the Golden Spikes Award annually to the top amateur baseball player in the country and is responsible for creating the USABat standard.
College softball is softball as played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education, predominantly in the United States. College softball is normally played by women at the Intercollegiate level, whereas college baseball is normally played by men.
The United States national baseball team represents the United States in international-level baseball competitions. The team is currently ranked 4th in the world by the World Baseball Softball Confederation. Team USA won the Olympic baseball tournament in 2000, and the World Baseball Classic (WBC) in 2017.
Jessica Ofelia Mendoza is an American sportscaster and former softball player. Currently, she serves as a color commentator and analyst for ESPN's coverage of Major League Baseball and Los Angeles Dodgers coverage on Spectrum SportsNet LA. As a softball outfielder, Mendoza was a collegiate four-time First Team All-American and two-time Olympic medalist. Mendoza played from 1999 to 2002 at Stanford and was a member of the United States women's national softball team from 2004 to 2010. She won a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens and a silver medal at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. She played professionally in National Pro Fastpitch and was named 2011 Player of the Year and currently ranks in the top 10 for career batting average and slugging percentage. She was an analyst on ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball from 2016 to 2019. She was dropped from the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast after the 2019 season but remains an ESPN baseball analyst. Mendoza was named by fans and experts to the Greatest College Softball Team as an outfielder, one of only three to achieve the honor.
Monica Cecilia Abbott is an American professional softball player, former collegiate All-American and silver medal-winning Team USA Olympian. Abbott pitched for the Tennessee Lady Volunteers in college, professionally in the NPF, and in the Japan Softball League. In international competition, she has played for Team USA from 2005 including the national softball team winning a silver medal at the 2008 and 2020 Summer Olympics. Abbott is the NCAA Division I leader in wins, strikeouts, shutouts and innings.
National Pro Fastpitch (NPF), formerly the Women's Pro Softball League (WPSL), was a professional women's softball league in the United States. The teams battled for the Cowles Cup.
The Women's Softball World Cup is a fastpitch softball tournament for women's national teams held historically every four years, now every two years, by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC). The tournament, originally known as the ISF Women's World Championship, was sanctioned by the International Softball Federation (ISF) until that body's 2013 merger with the International Baseball Federation to create the WBSC. The number of teams in the tournament began at five in its inaugural event in 1965, went to a high of 28 for the 1994 edition, and now the WBSC Code legislates that the maximum number of teams that may participate is 16. There are qualifying tournaments that determine which countries will play at the World Cup.
Fastpitch softball, also known as fastpitch or fastball, is a form of softball played by both women and men. While the teams are most often segregated by sex, coed fast-pitch leagues also exist. It is the form which will be used in the American Women Professional Fastpitch league, a women's pro–softball league whose inaugural season begins in June of 2022.
Natasha Renee Watley is an American, former collegiate four-time first-team All-American, two-time medal winning Olympian, retired seven-time pro All-Star softball player. Watley played college softball at UCLA, and helped the Bruins win a national championship. She represented the United States women's national softball team at the 2004 Summer Olympics and won a gold medal, and again at the 2008 Summer Olympics, and won a silver medal.
Andrea Jane Duran is an American, former collegiate All-American, medal-winning Olympian, professional four-time All-Star softball player. She played college softball at the University of California, Los Angeles in the Pac-12 Conference, where she was named to the all-conference team twice, and Pac-12 Player of the Year in 2006. She also won two national championships in 2003 and 2004, and was named to the All-Tournament team in 2006. She won a silver medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics. On the Olympic team she played third base and outfield. Duran was undrafted but later played professionally in the National Pro Fastpitch, being named the 2014 Player of the Year and winning three Cowles Cup championships with the USSSA Pride.
Haylea Petrie is a softball player from Australia, who won a bronze medal at the 1996 Summer Olympics.
The U-12 Baseball World Cup is the under-12 baseball world championship sanctioned by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) and its predecessor the International Baseball Federation (IBAF), and is the most elite and highest level of competition in its age category. The U-12 Baseball World Championship is scheduled to be held every two years and launched in 2011 in Taipei, Taiwan as the "12U Baseball World Championship".
The Ontario Amateur Softball Association (OASA), a member association of Softball Ontario. The OASA is the governing body for male competitive fast-pitch softball in Ontario. The association organizes qualifying tournaments and provincial championships. Each year the association inducts one or more members who have contributed to the development of amateur softball in Ontario into its Hall of Fame.
Chelsea Forkin is a softball and baseball player. As a softball player, Chelsea has won 3 Australian National Championship titles with the Western Australian Flames and 1 title with the Queensland Heat.
The WBSC Premier12 is the international baseball tournament organized by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC), featuring the 12 highest-ranked national baseball teams in the world. The first tournament was held by Taiwan and Japan in November 2015. The second tournament, 2019 WBSC Premier12, was held in November 2019, and served as a qualifier for two teams for baseball at the 2020 Summer Olympics.
The National Invitational Softball Championship (NISC) is a postseason women's college softball tournament sponsored by the National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA) and operated by Triple Crown Sports, Inc., a company that produces events for college and youth athletics. The tournament is for NCAA Division I teams that did not qualify for the NCAA Division I Softball Championship. Announced in December 2016, there are to be thirty-two automatic qualifiers from the thirty-two NCAA-sanctioned conferences and sixteen at-large teams selected on the basis of their RPI ranking and/or their season's performance.
Six national teams qualified to compete in baseball at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. As host, Japan automatically qualified. Israel also qualified, by winning the Africa/Europe Qualifying Event in September 2019.
Six teams qualified for the Olympic softball tournament, including Japan, which, as host nation, qualified automatically. The United States team won the 2018 Women's Softball World Championship to qualify for the Olympics. The remaining four spots were allocated through three qualification tournaments: one spot for a Europe/Africa tournament, one spot for an Asia/Oceania tournament, and two spots for an Americas tournament.
Premier Girls Fastpitch (PGF) is a national travel softball association. Teams compete in local, state, regional, and national tournaments. The national tournament is held every year in Huntington Beach, California, and consists of Premier and Platinum divisions.
