(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
  Berkvens, Steijger amongst 10 European officials on Premier12
Nederlands
      TAOYUAN / TAICHUNG / TAIPEI / DOULIU (Taiwan) / SAPPORO / TOKYO (Japan) -
Last Sunday, the inaugural edition of the Premier12 went underway in Sapporo (Japan), the next day the preliminary round started in Taiwan, where the majority of the tournament's schedule will be played.
The finals of the event will be played in Japanese capital Tokyo.
During the event, the focus is on the twelve participating teams, their (professional) players and (sometimes) their coaches.
But a game cannot be played without the game officials: the umpires, official scorers and technical commissioners.
Amongst them are ten Europeans, including two from The Netherlands.
...Winfried Berkvens...
...before the game of USA...
...vs. Dominican Republic... |
27 international umpires were named to officiate during the tournament.
For all games, a crew of five umpires is assigned.
Four of them actually are active during the game.
The fifth umpire (who also is in full uniform) is a back-up umpire, who can take over in case of an injury.
To do the scoring and thus compile the statistics, a group of twelve international official scorers was named.
Each game has three official scorers, with one of them doing the data entry, which creates the play-by-play, so everyone can follow the game.
Dutch umpire Winfried Berkvens is one of only two European umpires at the Premier12, the other being Italian Fabrizio Fabrizi, whose sister Sabrina Fabrizi is an international softball-umpire.
Included in the umpire-corps of 27 international umpires, 14 are coming from Asia (Chinese Taipei 7, Japan 6, South Korea 1), six from North America (USA 5, Canada 1), four from Central and South America (Cuba 1, Nicaragua 1, Panama 1, Venezuela 1) and one from Oceania (Australia 1).
The Umpire Director is Gustavo Rodriguez (USA), who is assisted by Umpire Liaisons Jorge Bauza (USA), Takeshi Hirabayashi (Japan) and Louis Liaw (Taiwan).
...Linda Steijger (right) with Susana Santos and...
...Andres De Leon (Panama) at the game between...
...Canada and Puerto Rico on Wednesday... |
In the group of international Official Scorers, Europe is represented by five scorers, including Linda Steijger (Netherlands), Pablo Carpio, Susana Santos (both Spain), Erika Sojat (Italy) and Stephanie Winkler (Germany).
The other seven scorers are coming from Australia, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, USA and Venezuela.
So far, only one scorer Taiwan had been assigned to one game.
All other games were scored by the international group of scorers.
The Scoring Director also comes from Europe, being Anna Maria Paini from Italy.
Amongst the Technical Commissioners, there are two Europeans, Angela Fanara and Giuseppe Guilizzoni, who are both from Italy.
There are eight Technical Commissioners during this event.
The other six are coming from Australia, Cuba, Japan, Panama, Puerto Rico and USA.
The group is led by Technical Director Jim Baba (Canada), who is assisted by Peter Caliendo (USA).
(November 13)
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