President's Day - Sunday 8th August

Following the success of last year's President's Day, Chalfont Softball Club have decided to make this an annual event. This year the Club's President, Neil Turner, is organising the event on Sunday 8th August on Goldhill Common.

The event will comprise 3 games of softball with Flames playing Phoenix (Phoenix narrowly won this game last year, no doubt Flames will be keen to reverse this this year) and both Flames and Phoenix play Avengers (the President's invitation team). The winner of the Phoenix vs. Avengers game will win the President's Cup - Avengers will be looking to hold on to this for another year.

Watch this space for more details of the day, including start times, other planned activities and details of plans for refreshments.

If you would like to play then please contact Emma - secretary@chalfontsoftballclub.co.uk

Junior Softball at Ley Hill Primary School

We have started running a 7 week programme of junior softball at Ley Hill Primary School with the help of one of our members, Mel Parker, who is a teacher at the school. The youngsters at the school had already played some softball and we're keen to develop their skills and play a lot more.

Neil and Clare, with the help of other club members and BSUK, are running a series of 1.25 hour sessions on Saturday mornings at the school with the aim of:

• Developing basic skills
• Improving the kids' knowledge of the game
• Having fun

So far we've covered catching, throwing, ground balls, fly balls and batting and the kids have had a great time competing against each other in a series of skills based games.

The kids all show huge amounts of natural talent and it's exciting for us to see the softballers of the future in action.

Development Of Softball Coaching Staff

You may or may not be aware that Neil Turner and Clare Winter have been working towards their Level 2 Softball Coaching awards this spring. Following a weekend of classroom modules and two practical assessments, they were left with proving that they have run six training sessions of which four needed to show a linked progression.

Well this week they have received their coaching awards after submitting training session plans for all Chalfont's training sessions since we started training at the beginning of March.

Gaining Level 2 is quite a milestone for both Neil and Clare and the club. It now means that:

• we have proved that all our training sessions are planned well
• we can now comply with the Clubmark requirement that all our training sessions are run by qualified coaches
• we now have two coaches that can (after a small payment to BSUK) be insured to run training sessions and events outside of our club - in schools and youth organisations for example or corporate softball days
• we now have the capability to run the eight week softball programme for a group of 9 and 10 year olds over in Ley Hill during July and August

To build on this development futher, the next step would be to start helping our Level 1 coaches start working towards their Level 2, and to find some more players interested in starting (or continuing) their Level 1.

Neil and Clare would be interested in hearing from anyone in the club who would like to start getting a coaching qualification.

Differences Between Softball And Rounders

Neil is looking for someone that is up in the rules of rounders for a future article for this website.

Following a number of discussions with people involved with running sports clubs in the South Buckinghamshire area, it is apparent that there are very strong links between rounders and softball, with a large overlap in the general princples of each game and that anyone with skills in rounders can find it easy to apply those skills and start playing softball. This was highlighted this weekend when a rounders player attended our training session and showed immediately that she would make an excellent softballer in a short space of time.

If you are interested in helping Neil with this article then please drop him an email or fill out the contact us form on this website.

Successful Open Day Held

Chalfont Softball Club held it's annual Open Day on Sunday 18th April on a sun drenched Gold Hill Common.

The event was run to introduce new players to softball and to provide a training session for those regular players that had not been to many training sessions so far this season.

The training session, run by our qualified coaches, consisted of some basic skills drills but with a competitive element - with players being split into groups and competing against each other in a number of skills drills.

We then completed the session with an hour long softball game where the new players got the experience a real softball game.

As with all training sessions, post match relaxtion was at the Village Hall pub.

Scoring Session

On Wednesday 14th April, Stan Doney from BSUK will be running a scoring session for the club. The session will be held in the Village Hall pub at 8:30pm and is open to all members of the club that are interested in learning how to score.

The aims of the session are to:

• Familiarise everyone with the basics of scoring
• Standardise scoring within the club
• Develop scoring such that it can be used to analyse offensive and defensive gameplay.

If you're interested in coming to the session then contact Clare (chairman@chalfontsoftballclub.co.uk) or just rock up on the night.

Level 2 Coaching Course

Neil and Clare completed their second assessment of the course on Saturday. They made the short trip to Royal Hollaway in Egham to each run a fifteen minute training session that was assessed by Celine Lassaigne and Kat Longshore of BSUK.

Unlike their first assessed session where subjects were chosen at random, Neil and Clare got to choose what they were going to cover. Clare chose an infield session concentrating on fielding a ground ball on the glove hand and Neil chose to use a 2B-1B-3B drill to work on some skills at second and third base.

Both sessions went well and feedback was positive and very encouraging. Having completed all the required workshops and CRB checks, both now only have to plan four linked training sessions, and provide evidence of having run six club training sessions.

If anyone in the club would like to start coaching, then please let either Clare or Neil know and they will look into getting you booked on a Level 1 course.