(Story & Photo by Marco Stoovelaar)
   Burkina Faso and Nigeria advance to Baseball Africa Cup
Nederlands
 ACCRA (Ghana) -
On Sunday (March 24), the Zone West Continental Pre Qualifier closed in Ghanese capital Accra.
There, Burkina Faso and Nigeria advanced to the Baseball Africa Cup by finishing in first and second place.
Host Ghana finished in third place.
On April 5-7, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda will participate in the Zone East Qualifier and on April 27-29, Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe are the participating countries in the Zone South Qualifier.
The two best teams of these Qualifiers also will advance to the Baseball Africa Cup, which will be held May 1-5 in Johannesburg (South Africa).
The winner of this event will become the Champion of Africa and will qualify for the Europe/Africa Olympic Qualifying Tournament Baseball, which takes place September 18-22 in the Italian cities of Bologna and Parma.
It will be the first African Championship since 2001.
The first Africa Cup Baseball Championship was held in1992 in Harare (Zimbabwe) with four participating countries.
South Africa then won the title, followed by Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Zambia.
The next Championships were held in 1993 (Cape Town, South Africa), 1995 (Harare, Zimbabwe) and 2001 (Kampala, Uganda).
On May 10-11, Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe will participate in the Softball Africa Olympic Pre Qualifier in Pretoria (South Africa).
The two best countries of that event will advance to the Europe/Africa Olympic Qualifying Tournament Softball, which will be organized July 23-28 in Vleuten (Utrecht) in the Netherlands.
The games in Ghana were played at Koshien Baseball Field, which is located at Labone Senior High School in the Greater Acca Region.
There, Burkina Faso opened on Friday with a 13-3 win against Nigeria.
On Saturday, Burkina Faso also won big against host Ghana, 14-4.
Only two of the runs in this game were earned.
With this win, Burkina Faso qualified for the Baseball Africa Cup.
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...Official Scorer Marco Battistella...
...during the 2011 European Cup...
...Winners Cup Softball in...
...Castions di Strada (Italy)...
(© Photo: Marco Stoovelaar) |
On Sunday, Ghana played against Nigeria in the deciding game for second place.
Nigeria nipped Ghana 7-6, scoring the deciding run in the bottom of the seventh inning.
David Yonusa then reached on an error and scored on another error, which was the eighth in the defense of Ghana.
Peter Yonusa threw a complete game for Nigeria, which also advanced to the Baseball Africa Cup.
South Africa is the lone African country on the list of the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC).
Last December, the country moved up three spots to 23rd place.
All other African countries are not ranked on the WBSC-list, which features 76 countries.
The ranking on the WBSC-list is based on points earned by a National Team or Federation in international competitions.
In total, twenty countries are members of the Africa Baseball and Softball Association (ABSA)
Seventeen countries have baseball, eighteen have softball.
The WBSC supports the ABSA during the three Regional Qualifiers.
Scoring and Umpiring instructors oversee the three tournaments and the WBSC organizes scoring and umpiring seminars before the start of the tournaments.
Italian Marco Battistella supported the local scorers in Accra.
(March 26)
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