KARACHI: The National Softball Academy (NSA) will be organizing the first ever Beach Softball Festival next month in Karachi in collaboration with Softball Federation of Pakistan (SFP). This was announced by NSA Chairperson Tehmina Asif on Wednesday.

Tehmina said that players from interior Sindh, who recently performed well in Defense Day Women Softball Championship recently in Khairpur, will also be invited to participate in beach softball event.

Beach softball is rapidly getting famous among softball playing nations who are now holding international beach softball tournaments.

“We are making efforts to provide our players with opportunity to play beach softball so that we can prepare strong Pakistan beach softball team that could compete in international beach softball events in future,” she said.

The NSA also recently organised softball coaching camp in Khairpur where 50 players from Karachi and interior Sindh participated. Shahid Aftab and Rao Jameel conducted the course, teaching rules, regulation and modern technical aspect of the game to participants. Head coach Fraz Ijaz coached the practical side — rules and regulation regarding ball pitching, catching and hitting at the ground.

NSA Director Mohammad Nasir said that holding such training event at grass root level will help promote the game of softball. “It will help us develop talent and seeing interest of the participants in the course makes me hopeful that many of these talented players will represent Pakistan national team in future,” he said.

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2018