(Story & Photo by Marco Stoovelaar)
   Neptunus awarded organization European Champions Cup-tournament 2018
Nederlands
 ZAGREB (Croatia) -
The Executive Committee of the European Baseball Confederation (CEB) has awarded the organization of next years international club-competitions and announced its choices on Thursday (November 23).
The organization of the European Champions Cup has been awarded to Curaçao Neptunus, which this year captured both the Cup, as well as the Dutch Championship-title.
On June 6, in Regensburg (Germany), Neptunus won the Cup by defeating UnipolSai Fortitudo Bologna (Italy) 7-3 in the Final.
On October 8, Neptunus captured its 18th Dutch Championship-title in club-history by winning the Holland Series.
Neptunus will organize the event at the Neptunus Familiestadion, its home-site in Rotterdam, on June 6-10.
Besides Neptunus, the Netherlands will be represented by L&D Amsterdam Pirates, which won the Cup in 2016.
The other participating teams come from Italy (2), the Czech Republic (1), France (1), Germany (1) and San Marino (1).
Neptunus, which will celebrate its 75th anniversary next year, hosted the European Champions Cup Qualifier Tournaments in 2010, 2012 and 2015.
Neptunus was not successful in 2010 and 2012.
In those editions, the two best teams qualified for the Final Four, but Neptunus failed to do so after suffering two surprising losses in the preliminary round.
Neptunus then won the tournament in 2015 to reach the Best-of-Three Final against Fortitudo Bologna.
After losing the first game in Italy, Neptunus won the next two games at home in Rotterdam to win the Cup.
A year later, Neptunus was dethroned by Amsterdam Pirates, but won the Cup again this year.
Since last year, there only is one tournament again to decided the Championship.
The Rotterdam-squad won the European Cup (now European Champions Cup) nine times.
The team also won the European Cup Winners Cup five times.
...The Neptunus Familiestadion will be the site for...
...the 2018 European Champions Cup-tournament...
(© Photo: Marco Stoovelaar) |
In the same period, Ostrava (Czech Republic) will be the playing site for the CEB Cup.
In this tournament, also eight teams will participate, coming from the Belarus (1), Belgium (1), Croatia (1), Czech Republic (1), France (1), Germany (1), Switzerland (1) and Ukraine (1).
The Federations Cup, the third European Cup-tournament, will be played in Brasschaat (Belgium), from June 11 or 12 through 16 or 17.
Six teams will participate in this event, coming from Austria (1), Belgium (1), Croatia (1), Slovakia (1) and Spain (2).
For the following tournaments, the organisors also were announced:
Federations Cup Qualifier, awarded to Blagoevgrad (Bulgaria), June 11/12-16/17
European Championship Qualifier Under-23, awarded to Bratislava (Slovakia), August 6-12
European Championship Seniors Qualifier C-Pool, awarded to Elizavetgrad (Ukraine), July 23-29 (second location)
In early October, other hosts of European Championships were announced:
European Championship Under-12 (Juveniles), awarded to Budapest (Hungary), July 2-8
European Championship Qualifier Under-15 (Cadets), awarded to Sisak (Croatia), July 16-22
European Championship Under-18 (Juniors), awarded to Grosseto (Italy), July 9-15
European Championship Seniors Qualifier C-Pool, awarded to Dublin (Ireland), July 23-29
Also in early October, the inaugural edition of the Super Six was awarded to Hoofddorp (Netherlands), where it will be held September 18-23.
In this event, the National Teams of the Netherlands, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy and Spain will participate in the baseball-tournament.
There also will be a Super Six softball-tournament at the same site with the participation of the National Teams of the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Greece, Italy and Russia.
(November 26)
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