The 24th annual National Women Softball Championship

Seven teams from across the jewel are participating in the twenty-fourth annual National Women’s Softball Championship held by the Belize Softball Federation. Starting this Friday at six-thirty p.m. at the Rogers Stadium in Belize City, the top two teams from each association will compete in a double eliminations format to win the bragging rights and title as the best female softball players in the country. Today, News Five spoke with Vice President of the Federation, Jude Lizama on the games that will be open to all those softball aficionados.

Jude Lizama, Vice-President, Belize Softball Federation

Jude Lizama

“We’ve always had the national championships as an opportunity for the federation’s District Associations to send their top two teams, basically their second and first place teams to the championships. The tournament actually in its structure can look for eight teams; this year we have seven coming in—we only have one team from Orange Walk—but those teams are representing their individual associations. In the case of Belize City, it is the first place team which is the Belize Bank Blazzers and the second place team, which is the Beacon. From Cayo, we have two teams coming in. they have not finalized their first and second place teams, but their representatives will be from Esperanza Wolverines and Roaring Creek Grace Kennedy. They will be able to finish their championship to decide first and second place team after the national, but they will be sending their top two teams. So we are glad to have them in. And then we have the two teams from Belize Rural, which are Burrell Boom and Lord’s Bank, and that rounds out our seven teams that will take place. The tournament is a double eliminations format. We begin on Friday night with two games starting at six-thirty and then we start early on Saturday at nine where the team from Carmelita will play Burrell Boom. And then format follows from that…again double elimination means that a team has to lose two games to be eliminated. I think we are slated for seven games on Saturday and six games on Sunday after which we will have the champion and we have awards for first, second and third place and we also have individual awards for offensive and defensive categories.”