Greek National Softball Team Aims for Olympics, Will Compete in European Championship

The Greek Soft­ball Fed­er­a­tion is on a mis­sion to qual­i­fy a team for the 2020 Sum­mer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. As part of that mis­sion, Greece’s U22 Nation­al Soft­ball Team will com­pete this sum­mer in Slo­va­kia among the world’s top tal­ent at the Women’s Euro­pean Cham­pi­onship — a 17-team tour­na­ment run­ning from July 22 – July 2. The Olympic-qual­i­fy­ing games do not tech­ni­cal­ly take place until next year. But head coach Tony Foti said this year’s com­pe­ti­tion is still cru­cial to pre­pare his play­ers for the inter­na­tion­al stage. “The events this year are meant to give ath­letes inter­na­tion­al expo­sure and to eval­u­ate how they do in inter­na­tion­al play,” Foti told The Pap­pas Post via phone inter­view. “We have to give the younger ones some expo­sure at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el because it’s a whole dif­fer­ent lev­el.” In addi­tion to this month’s upcom­ing cham­pi­onship, the squad will com­pete against the best once again in Sep­tem­ber, when they trav­el to the Nether­lands for the Super Six Tour­na­ment fea­tur­ing Europe’s top six teams. Greek Soft­ball Fed­er­a­tion Pres­i­dent Kostis Liarom­ma­tis said that he is very excit­ed to see his home coun­try play­ing among top tal­ent.    “It’s a huge hon­or for Greece to par­tic­i­pate in the top six coun­tries in soft­ball and base­ball. I’m very proud about that,” he said. “It’s a huge hon­or to be there, because it’s not open. We earned it to be there.” How­ev­er, while the team con­tin­ues to set the bar high, Foti said they have encoun­tered many dif­fi­cul­ties due to one glar­ing obsta­cle: lack of mon­ey “Our chal­lenge is that we have no fund­ing. For the last two years the play­ers have fundraised and cov­ered expens­es out of their own pock­ets,” he said. “The ath­letes are not get­ting any assis­tance.” He added that play­ers have even had to pay for their own flights over­seas, an issue that has kept some ful­ly-qual­i­fied ath­letes from being able to par­tic­i­pate due to finan­cial need.  “The gov­ern­ment doesn’t finance us. They don’t give any sup­port at all. Every­thing that has been done is pri­vate by me,” Liarom­ma­tis told The Pap­pas Post via phone inter­view. “We have got­ten dona­tions in the past two years from the USA, but it is not enough.” The Athens native has been pres­i­dent for five years, and he said the fed­er­a­tion still lacks for­mal recog­ni­tion from the Greek gov­ern­ment due to not hav­ing enough clubs. When Liarom­ma­tis took the posi­tion, soft­ball in Greece was all but non-exis­tent with mere­ly six clubs, but now he said this has almost grown to 20, which is the num­ber need­ed to form an offi­cial fed­er­a­tion. “I’m try­ing to col­lect all the need­ed doc­u­ments to have my fed­er­a­tion back,” he said. “The prob­lem is that the Inter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee can­not send me mon­ey [if we are not rec­og­nized].” Liarom­ma­tis added that, even with recog­ni­tion, the com­mit­tee still can­not offer enough mon­ey (about $59,000 per year) to meet a nation­al team’s bud­get, a bud­get which Foti esti­mat­ed typ­i­cal­ly floats between $150,000-$200,000. On top of finan­cial issues, Foti said his team has faced anoth­er major dilem­ma. Since most of the ath­letes (20 of 24) are born in the U.S., they have had to endure what he describes as an increas­ing­ly “bureau­crat­ic” process of obtain­ing Greek cit­i­zen­ship. “In Greece they’re mak­ing it hard­er and hard­er,” he said. “We have [Greek-Amer­i­can] kids whose two par­ents were born in Greece and they won’t give them cit­i­zen­ship.” Liarom­ma­tis echoed the coach’s sen­ti­ment, say­ing he thinks that most of the Greek con­sulates in the U.S. are “very, very strict” and that they ask “very dif­fi­cult” ques­tions. He explained that sit­u­a­tions become espe­cial­ly chal­leng­ing for Greek-Amer­i­can play­ers with old­er her­itage, as they some­times strug­gle to find paper­work or oth­er tan­gi­ble proof of their Greek ori­gins. Foti also gave a pair of exam­ples show­ing how tough the process has become. In the first case, he said one of his play­ers has spent three years try­ing to obtain her cit­i­zen­ship. The oth­er instance that Foti men­tioned hap­pened last year, when the Greek gov­ern­ment sent one play­er a rejec­tion let­ter stat­ing she was denied for being born “in sin” and out of wed­lock. “We need to find some­one who works in a con­sulate or the gov­ern­ment office,” he said. “Some­one who can advo­cate for us and help us with this endeav­or.” Foti has been with the Greek nation­al team for just two years so far, but the head coach has decades of pri­or coach­ing expe­ri­ence with the Cana­di­an nation­al team as well as Amer­i­can col­lege teams. Hav­ing been involved with soft­ball since the age of five, the Cana­da-native spoke high­ly of his cur­rent group’s abil­i­ties. “The play­ers are great. They’re great young women and they work real hard,” Foti said. “Most of them are estab­lished col­lege play­ers or up-and-com­ing high school kids.” 

Liarom­ma­tis also said he is very con­tent — both with the team’s abil­i­ty and with their char­ac­ter. “I’m very proud because I found a lot of the right peo­ple to help me, and I also found good play­ers with huge tal­ent with a very good Greek spir­it and men­tal­i­ty,” he said. “They like to play for their grand­fa­thers’ home coun­try.” He said he par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoys watch­ing the play­ers sing the Greek nation­al anthem, adding that he “can’t wait” for them to play in the next tour­na­ment. The team has two pri­or expe­ri­ences in inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion — the first in the 2016 Women’s World Cham­pi­onships in Sur­rey, British Colum­bia, and the sec­ond in the 2017 Euro­pean Women’s Cham­pi­onship in Bol­late, Italy. Foti said that next year’s Euro­pean cham­pi­onships will fea­ture almost 30 teams hop­ing to qual­i­fy for the 2020 Sum­mer Olympics, mean­ing Greece will need to fin­ish in the top eight to make the final cut. For now, the team pre­pares for the Euro­pean Cham­pi­onships, where they face host team Slo­va­kia in their open­ing match — Mon­day, July 23 at 1 p.m. local time / 7 a.m. EST. Live stream­ing will be avail­able.

More information

Euro­pean Cham­pi­onships 2018 schedule Greeksoftball.gr