As the top women’s softball players battle it out for their club teams at the NZ Open Women's Clubs Championships, Softball NZ are already looking to future.
The Women's World Softball Championship will be held this July in Canada. At the 2014 World Championships the White Sox finished 8th.
This year they've named 17 players in the world team, 10 are based in NZ, the other 7 are overseas.
“This year we have a mix of older players and a number of younger players. Some will be debuted in Vancouver this year at this level. All of them have a level of playing in the US or the international programme," says White Sox manager Aroha Metcalf.
Apart from the world championships this year, there's another competition that the White Sox have their eye on.
“Its an important year this year for us. Fingers crossed that they’ll be an announcement soon that Softball will be back in the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.
All the head coaches have been planning for it, so this team is an important team to take us to Olympic qualification,” adds Metcalf.
Softball has been in the Summer Olympics before back in 1996 to 2008, but was removed from the program for the 2012 and 2016 games.