Benefits from softball win

Press, 15 July 1982, Page 32

Benefits from softball win

Four tired, but happy world champions • arrived back in Christchurch yesterday with their team manager, Lyndsey Leask, to a rousing welcome from the softball fraternity. Cheryl Kemp, Robyn Storer, Miss Leask, Jane Earnshaw and Natalie Hazelwood helped win the fifth world women’s softball championships in Taipei for New Zealand. Penny Salton, the other Canterbury member of the New Zealand team, had stopped off in Nelson. New Zealand won its first world softball title by beating the host nation, Taiwan (Chinese Taipei), 2-0, before a tumultuous and ■ patriotic crowd in the grand final on Sunday. The Canterbury players were greeted by the Mayor of Christchurch (Sir Hamish Hay), the retiring patron of the Canterbury. Softball Association, Councillor Nola Massey, and banners in which words were not wasted. “Welcome home champs,” exulted one banner, while another, unfurled by Cheryl

Kemp’s work colleagues, read: "World No. I's., Congratulations, you little beauts.” - On the way back from Taipei, though, the joy of the New Zealand .players had been tempered a little by excess baggage charges in the region of $7OOO. Miss Leask said that the team had been charged an extra $4OOO to $5OOO for the flight from Singapore to New Zealand and about $2OOO from Taipei to Singapore. , ' “It was pretty shattering,” she said. A lot of it was playing gear and gifts. They were showering us with things wherever, we went.” C jsiderable unaccompanied baggage had already been left behind and there was no charge made for the giant world championship trophy that is now the New Zealand Softball Association’s to keep. “They didn’t weigh the trophy.' It was carried up in first class,’’ said Miss Leask. Initially,' the trophy has been left in the care of the successful New Zealand captain, Naomi Shaw (Hutt Valley). According to Miss

Leask, it is big and colourful. "But I’d rather have a smaller one.” Major "bonuses" resulting from the championship win are that Northern hemisphere countries ■ will be more wijling to pay big money for New Zealand to tour their country. Equally, they will be more willing to pay costly travel to play in New Zealand, according to Mrs Leask. For two members of the New Zealand team, Cheryl Kemp and Robyn Storer, the win was a particularly satisfying one. Both were survivors of the third world series at Stratford! Connecticut, back in 1974, when New Zealand finished only ninth. This time it was first in a 23nation tournament. Storer and Hazelwood, both in the outfield, were the two Canterbury players on the diamond for the grand final. “It was an incredible . atmosphere,” said Storer, who scored the first run. "When you have 40,000 to 50,000 Chinese cheering for China (Taiwan).” In the first game against the Taiwanese on Sunday,

which New Zealand won, 4-3, in tie-break innings, cans were thrown on to the field after an unpopular decision. “They did applaud good play,” Storer added; “They were very patriotic, I suppose.’’.''- ' The popular Burnside softballer agreed that the world championship title (and the weighty gold medal that went with it) was the thrill of her career. “It would have to be the ultimate.” "We had 1% games in three days, then eight to nine games in-the other-three. It was pretty well done by New Zealand.” '.. Storer paid tribute to some “brilliant coaching,” spearheaded by Mr Ed Dolejs, of Nelson, and said the win was the result of a real team effort "There were heroes, in every game. It was fantastic." '■ i V-.”. J At the moment Storer, 27 this month, "couldn’t be any happier.” She was unwilling to speculate whether she might be available for the next world series. “I’ve just got back from this' one ... I might be ’had it’ in four years."