The East Midlands Softball League
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EMSL Umpire Wins National Award

EMSL

Each year at the British Softball Federation Annual General Meeting several awards are presented by the BSF for the previous year.  One of these awards is the “BSF Slowpitch Umpire of the Year”.

At the 2020 BSF AGM it was announced that our very own League Umpire-in-Chief Jason Smith has won the award for the 2019 season.

Said the BSF  “Jason Smith has been a qualified BASU umpire for about 10 years.  He has attended two Advanced Courses and was the first name on the BASU list to attend the ESF Slowpitch Clinic in 2020.  He is also the Umpire-in-Chief for East Midlands Softball League and is very proactive in his support of local umpiring, having introduced a mentoring scheme for newly-qualified umpires in the East Midlands.

Jason has always been willing to travel extensively to umpire at tournaments across the UK, and he is helping to deliver two BASU Qualifying Courses this year with a view to becoming one of BASU’s official trainers next year.”

It is great to see one of our own umpires winning a national award of this magnitude and Jason is hopeful that other umpires in the EMSL can win this award in the future, “we have some great umpires in the league and it would be great to see a few of them aspiring to win such an award in the future”, Jason also went on to say “I was extremely surprised to hear that I had won the award, it’s one of those awards that you don’t really think you’d win as there are some really great umpires in the country, however I am extremely grateful and humbled to win the award, however I couldn’t have done it without the help and support of a lot of the other umpires in the BASU community”

Although Jason was the first on the list to attend the ESF Slowpitch clinic in 2020, unfortunately he cannot attend this due to injury meaning he cannot actively play or umpire this coming season, however he won’t be taking a break this year and is likely to be very busy this year providing mentoring to our new umpires at a local level and umpires further afield as part of BASU commitments.