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University Softball Championship set to pile on the action

With the presentation of Team Taiwan's uniform at a press conference in Tainan on Tuesday afternoon, the hype for the 2006 World University Softball Championship, which opens in Tainan this weekend, officially began.

Five of the world's top softball nations will flock to Tainan with their elite college softball players to join the Taiwanese squad in this year's six-team competition, which also includes Australia, Japan, South Africa, Thailand and the US, all aiming to take home the gold and a place in international softball history.

An action-packed schedule that features two games per day for each team in a double round-robin playing format for a total of 10 games in the preliminary rounds awaits the athletes as they arrive in the cultural center of southern Taiwan starting today.

The top four finishers after the preliminaries will then play in a page system that will pair up the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds and the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds in two second-round contests before the winners from the No. 3-No. 4 matchup take on the losers of the No. 1-No. 2 matchup in the third game of the second round.

The winners from the No. 1-No. 2 matchup will then take on the winners from the third game in the second round in a title game for the gold medal this year.

All indications in the early going suggest that Team USA, the defending champs from two years ago in Plant City, Florida, will be the club to beat this year with returning head coach Carol Hutchins (University of Michigan) leading the way.

Standing in the American ladies' way in their request to defend the title will be the home hostesses (second-place finishers in 2004) and the Australians, along with a Japanese crew that will put up a serious fight in the 35 degrees Celsius and above southern Taiwan heat in what promises to be an exciting week of competition.
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