2017-09-16

HKBA, Host of Inaugural Women’s Baseball Asian Cup, Won International Admiration

Hong Kong (BFA) - Six Women’s National Baseball Teams from Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea and Pakistan participated in the inaugural BFA Women’s Baseball Asian Cup in Hong Kong from September 2 to 7, 2017. Following welcome speeches by Chairman Felix Yip and BFA Director Allan Mak of Hong Kong Baseball Association, President Tom Peng (TPE) of Baseball Federation of Asia opened the six-day Championship (photo) at the opening ceremony at Sai Tso Wan Baseball Field.

President Riccardo Fraccari of World Baseball Softball Federation (WBSC) sent a message saying “Globally, women’s baseball continues to be one of our sport’s fastest growing disciplines and this newly launched Asian Cup represents a giant step toward growing women’s baseball into an Olympic event.” Guests and officials were also introduced at the ceremony, including Tournament Director Kung Fu Hao Jeff (TPE), Umpire Director Koyama Katsuhito (JPN) and Scoring Director Anna Maria Paini (ITA).

The competitions were mixture of close contests as well as process of learning for some developing teams who trained together with Japanese teams after their games. One of the tight games was Hong Kong vs. Japan as Hong Kong was one swing away from causing one of the biggest upsets against World number one Japan which ultimately held on to a 2-0 lead to edge out the home side, but suffered a huge scare in the last inning at Sai Tso Wan. An ad hoc Umpire School was conducted after the end of the series.
President Philip Li’s comment at the closing banquet at the on September 7 reflects common recognition of all the participants: “The bad weather during the tournament period could not draw us back, rather it gave us the opportunity to show the baseball people's unity and passion in the sport. Baseball can draw together people of different colours and politics to the ground of friendship.”

Project Manager Nicky To, who was instrumental in the successful running of the event, also left a positive note saying: “The most encouraging result is we recorded a live stream that over 330,000 views during the tournament period. We further push the live stream locally and shared with the participating teams over the past week, the number of views have been increased higher than 455,000. WBSC is impressed by the number of views. “



FINAL TEAMS’ RANKING:
1 JAPAN 2 CHINESE TAIPEI 3 SOUTH KOREA 4 HONG KONG 5 INDIA 6 PAKISTAN

INDIVIDUAL AWARDS :
LEADING HITTER CHEUNG Wai Yee ( .588) HKG
PITCHER BEST ERA HIMENO Mayu (0.00 ERA, 5.0 IP) JPN
PITCHER BEST WON-LOSS AVG KIM Heejin (2 W) KOR
MOST RUNS BATTED IN TU Yu Chuan (9 RBI - 14/AB) TPE
MOST STOLEN BASES TU Yu Chuan (9 SB – 9 ATT) TPE
MOST RUNS SCORED TU Yu Chuan (8 R) TPE
OUTSTANDING DEFENSIVE PLAYER KANEMITSU Ririna JPN
MOST VALUABLE PLAYER OGATA Yuka JPN

OFFICIALS:
TOURNAMENT DIRECTOR: Kung Fu Hao Jeff (TPE)
Technical Director: Yeh Chih Shien Calvin (TPE)
UMPIRES Umpire Director: Koyama Katsuhito (JPN)
Scorers Director: Anna Maria Paini (ITA)