Who are we?
Starting out as the Coventry Tigers in 2010, the team were together for a few short years before splitting up and heading their separate ways.
Fast forward to 2014 and Tom Mapp, a member of BSUK (BaseballSoftballUK), gets in touch with a couple of the former Tigers to push a relaunch of the club in the summer. A rag, tag bunch of locals assembled one Wednesday evening at the War Memorial Park. Once warmed up, a game commenced.
It was quickly evident that we knew nothing about softball. Confusion and constant rule questioning were a big part of the first training session. But by the end of the session, the idea of bringing the Coventry Tigers back was pitched. We had been entered into our first recreational tournament - the Labor Day tournament - by Tom a few short months later. Game on.
The following weeks brought along a lot of progress and we started to grow some strong, positive skills. Maybe we wouldn't show ourselves up completely at Labor Day...
Labor Day rolled around and unfortunately we struggled to get a full squad for the two days as we were a few female players down. A few tweets and Facebook messages later, we were able to draft a couple or ringers (players from other teams) for our games over the weekend. At this point, it hit home quickly that we were still a very new and inexperienced team, but we were quick to learn from our mistakes.
We ended up finishing 5th out of 12 teams in the recreational group which, needless to say, surprised us but also, gave us some sweet satisfaction after working so hard. A few weeks later, we were invited by the Birmingham Bobcats to play at a local tournament which they had set up. We ended up finishing 2nd! It was a great high to end the season on.
The decision to change the team name came about because we wanted a fresh start to the 2015 season. There was already an established Tigers softball team within the East Midlands and we felt that the team name should reflect where we came from. With a new committee behind the team, A few ideas were thrown around and the Blitz stuck with us. Over the winter 14/15, the committee worked hard. We managing to get funding via the National Lottery, supported three of the committee members to complete a Level 1 assistant coaching training course, bought a whole load of new equipment as well as a completely re-designed uniform.
Exciting times ahead for us, so keep your eyes peeled and we look forward to seeing you all this season!
Fast forward...less than 12 months on from our first "Labor Day" tournament and we were back again. More teams were entered, and the standard was higher than ever. We started a little slowly on the Saturday with some wins and losses on the board and facing an unbeaten team (our friends the MK Diamonds) in our first game on the Sunday. The weather had changed from glorious sunshine to torrential rain...turns out, the Blitz love the rain! Gio pitched a no-hitter (and was one errant throw away from a perfect game), and from there we didn't lose again, ending up as Ashes/Rec winners 2015 - our first silverware but hopefully not our last!