The 2021 season ended on the Forlì “Buscherini” diamond with the hosts celebrating the fifth title in their history, tomorrow – Saturday 2 April – the championship of Serie A1 Softball will see the start of the new season. Twelve teams all in search of the final title.
The 2022 Serie A1 Softball season will see the formations divided into two groups of six teams, with some changes compared to the subdivisions of recent years.
Each team will compete against their divisional rivals in two series of two games with the classic formula of round trip. At the end of the first round, each team will face all the teams of the other group in a single series of two matches.Intergyrone which will be staged from the weekend of 7-8 May to that of 11-12 June. The championship will stop, due to the commitments of the national teams, after the weekend of 18-19 June and will restart from 6-7 August. At the end of the regular season each team will have played a total 32 games (20 against the opponents of the group and 12 of the intergirone).
Only the first two classified for each group will qualify for the playoffs, accessing directly to the semifinals. The Scudetto semifinals they will be at their best five raceswith the first two that will be played Saturday 10 September (in the home of the second classified) and the last three on the weekend of 17-18 September (in the home of the first classified). L’Italian Softball Series it will be at its best five games and will be played on September 24 and the weekend of 1-2 October.
L’last team of each group will be demoted to Serie A2 Softballwhile the two teams that will finish their grouping will compete in a playout at the best of five games (the dates coincide with those of the Scudetto semifinal) to decree the third relegated team.
Group A will see protagonists Sestese, Bertazzoni Collecchio, Inox Team Saronno, MKF Bollate, Pianoro e Caserta. Spotlight on the two Lombard teams, finalists in 2020, both exited with anger and regret from 2021: Bollate ran into a double defeat, in the Scudetto final and in the Premiere Cup final, against Forlì, with the Romagna players on their way to national title had eliminated Saronno in the semifinals only after the verdict of the National Sports Judge. However, both teams will have to do without important players of the successes of recent years: Bollate will not be able to count on his own symbol player, Greta Cecchettiwho went to play in Japan in the ranks of the SGH Galaxy Stars and that the management of Bollate replaced with the Czech pitcher Veronika Peckovae Marta Gasparotto, who instead signed with Forlì; while Saronno will not be able to count on Kelly Barnhillbrilliant especially in the first part of last season, which instead will play in the Netherlands.
Almost unprecedented challenges against the two Lombard powers for Collecchio, Pianoro e Sestese, until last year included in the other grouping. Among these the most quoted team to annoy the Lombard tandem seems to be Pianoro, last year able to give Bollate a hard time in the preliminary playoff, but the excellent work of Collecchio and Sestese, now steadily in maximum series and who will present themselves at the starting line with the aim of maintaining the category. To close the group there is Caserta, the southernmost club of this A1 Softball championship, which last year maintained the category by winning the playout against the young players of New Bollate.
Group B will instead be composed of Banco di Sardegna Nuoro, Bussolengo 2.0, Metalco Thunders, Poderi dal Nespoli Forlì, Rheavendors Caronno, Taurus Donati Tires Old Parma. The favors of the prediction are on the champions of Italy and Europe in office: with the confirmation of June Francisca at the helm of the team, Forlì added the aforementioned Marta Gasparotto and the Swiss-American receiver / external Mariah Jamisontwo additions that will have to cope with the unavailability of Erika Piancastelli, also engaged in Japan together with Cecchetti. Those who played a joke on the Forlì people last year, surprisingly closing the group in first position, are the Metalco Thunders who, at the exploit of 2021, want to respond with a confirmation to the upper floors of the blue softball also in 2022 and to do so they rely on the return in Castelfranco Veneto of Carlotta Salis and graft Kiana Jade Workman. It arouses particular curiosity to see how Caronno will behave, who, placed in the other group compared to those of his Lombard rivals, will be able to play a role of absolute protagonist: at the court of White Argenis they came from Bollate Sara Riboldi e Lara Cecchettitwo additions that the Varese team hopes will help in the goal of hitting the playoffs for the third consecutive year.
Old Parma is playing its chips with the return of Yamerki Guevara on the launch pad, one of the best pitchers of the past season, and the graft of Rosangela Gardens arrived from Caserta. After a year of purgatory in cadetteria he sees himself again in A1 Bussolengo, in the new corporate role, which boasts many young people among its ranks who make up the backbone of the blue youth selections: 2022 could still be early to see Bussolengo back to the glories of past years when trophies were raised in Verona, but the results obtained so far suggest that the road is the right one.
Nuoro last year obtained a salvation with little trouble and maintaining the category will undoubtedly be the goal of the Sardinian team that will be able to count on a group that has been playing together for many years now.