Home|Sports|BAISS softball season gets underway TuesdaySports

Simba FrenchSend an emailSeptember 16, 2022 372 3 minute readFacebookTwitterLinkedInShare via Email

The Bahamas Association of Independent Secondary Schools (BAISS) will kick off its 2022-2023 sporting calendar on Tuesday, September 20 with its softball season on Tuesday, September 20 at various locations.

Four division titles will be up for grabs – senior boys, senior girls, junior boys and junior girls divisions. It is the first time that the BAISS will be hosting its softball season since the 2019-2020 school year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Coordinator for the softball discipline, Ainsworth Beckford, said that it was imperative to get softball up and running.

“It is key to get started as we have a calendar of sporting events to try and get in within the school year. If we push back softball, it is going to affect the sports we normally play at the end of the school year which is volleyball. We need to get softball started so we can keep on track with the calendar so we can have a smooth calendar for the year,” Beckford said.

The softball season was set to start on Monday, September 19 but because of the National Holiday those games were pushed back to Friday, September 23. The senior girls will kick the season off on Tuesday, September 20.

Queen’s College will host Kingsway Academy,; St. Andrew’s will host St. Anne’s Schools; St. Augustine’s College will host C.W. Saunders Schools; over at Freedom Farm, Nassau Christian Schools will host Temple Christian Schools. All games start at 3.30 p.m.

“Our student-athletes at Nassau Christian Schools are excited to go again,” Beckford said. They are just ready to let loose on the field against other schools. It is the same thing that I am hearing from the other schools. The students are excited to get back into competition.”

As for the level of competition, Beckford said that the senior level should be very competitive as they were involved in the sport outside of school. The junior high level may not be as competitive because they were in primary school before the pandemic hit, where they were not playing any softball. He understands that it will be a rebuilding process.

“The level of competition will be a mixed one,” Beckford said. With the juniors, I see a little of a struggle there as they were coming out of primary school where there is no competition at all. They come into high school, and they will do a lot of catching up. Those kids who were playing baseball from the two leagues – Freedom Farm and Junior Baseball League of Nassau (JBLN), they did not stop playing. We are expecting very good technical skills to be displayed by those students who were involved in some level of sporting activity.”

There has been a push to have the boys play baseball in the private schools like in the government schools. Beckford said that while they want to have baseball played in BAISS, it is not a simple fix as facilities are needed in case all 15 of their member schools decide to play baseball.

“We do not have sufficient fields to play a round robin format amongst the schools,” Beckford stated. “We are looking around and thankfully, the National Sports Authority (NSA) refurbished the softball complex which should be able to play baseball, but it is still a softball complex. Few private schools can accommodate baseball namely SAC, St. Andrew’s School and Aquinas College. They have a sizable field to accommodate baseball. All the other schools will rely on facilities such as Freedom Farm and the facilities by Blue Hills. It’s a logistic situation for us and we are trying our best to see as quickly as we can to get baseball going.”

There are 10 schools across the four divisions that are participating in this year’s softball season. In the 2019 season, Queen’s College won the senior boys division while St. John’s College won the senior girls. On the junior side, Queen’s College won the boys and C.W. Saunders won the girls.

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