RANKINGS
EVENTS
I COMMITTED
COLLEGE
ABOUT
We continue our list of the Top 15 Softball Stories of 2019, which will run through December 31st when we’ll present our No. 1 story of the year.
Here are the previous stories (clink on link to read):
- #15… Team USA Dominates Summer Competition… with One Exception
- #14… USA Softball’s 2020 Stand Beside Her Tour… Taking the Brand Nationwide
- #13… Sam Show’s Bat Flips – & Clutch Performances – Light Up the 2019 Season
- #12… National High School Player of the Year Sydney Supple Spearheads Hometown Field of Dreams
- #11… Busy Year for the NPF Including USSSA Pride Out & CA Commotion In
- #10… PGF Nationals Celebrates 10 Years with Barnburner Finishes
- #9… Coaches Accused of Abuse by Players at Power 5 Colleges
- #8… Mark Campbell’s Death Stuns Club & High School Softball World
- #7… September 1 Becomes a Special Day in Recruiting (Again)
We’ve surveyed the softball community and talked internally as well to come up with what were the most impactful and relevant stories of the year pertaining to the world of fastpitch softball.
Where applicable, we are providing links to the original articles and/or references when the story first happened.
Today’s story… #6: 2020 Olympic Field of Six… We knew a year ago who two of the six teams slotted to play in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games were as Japan was automatically in as the host team and the United States had qualified by winning the 2018 WBSC Softball World Championship. Four spots, however, were still left undetermined before this year’s qualifiers across the world determined who would try to take down the favored Power 2 of Japan and the US…
To provide comments, insights or thoughts, email: [email protected].
*****
It has been 12 years since softball was last played in the Olympics and those 20208 Beijing Games came down to the two teams considered the favorites for the 2020 Tokyo Games—Japan and the United States.
Team Japan upset the USA squad, which had won the Gold Medals in the previous three Olympics (Atlanta in ’96, Sydney in ’00 and Athens in ’04), to end the American’s 22-game win streak.
Ironically, Japan would become the host for the 2020 games and the Tokyo Games meant that the host city would already be one of the six teams determined to compete in what will be a format of single round-robin play preceding the bronze and gold medal games totaling 17 games.
After the United States qualified in 2018 by winning the WSBC World Championship (see below), that meant the four remaining teams would come from three international tournaments: one from competitions in Asia/Oceania and Europe/Africa and two entrants from a tournament in the Americas.
By the end of September, we knew who the field of would be—Japan, USA, Italy, Mexico, Canada and Australia—and how they got there.
*** Scroll down to read the Extra Inning Softball articles from the last year that followed the international qualifiers that set the field for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games…