Sammamish Sports Fans: Junior Softball World Series for Teens Starts Sunday in Kirkland

The ever-popular Little League World Series is just around the corner, but before the event in Willamsport, Pa. gets going, Kirkland will be hosting its own international tournament.

The 13th annual Junior Softball World Series (JSWS) gets under way on Sunday at in Kirkland. The event features 10 teams from the 13-14 year-old softball division competing for the world title and has been held in Kirkland every year since its inception in 1999.

The JSWS is run through Little League International and draws teams from all over the world. Five teams from different regions in the United States will square off against regional champions from Canada, the Asia Pacific region, Latin America and Europe/Middle East/Africa. The local District 9 champion, this year was the Bellevue/Mercer Island All-Stars, also is entered each year as the host team. Teams are split into pools of five, with the top two teams from each pool advancing to the semifinal round and a chance to take home the world championship.

The event may lack the publicity of the younger, baseball version, but still gets in on some of the national exposure, as ESPN broadcasts the championship game on its ESPN2 network (all games will be tracked live and updates can be found through links posted in the JSWS site). Phil Phillips, vice president of softball for the Kirkland American Little League, which hosts the tournament, said that crowd sizes range from the dozens to the hundreds, depending on the game.

“It really is actually pretty good,” Phillips said of the turnout. “It ranges from some of the weekday games maybe a couple of hundred people between a couple of the games, but the championship game, there’s a good share of people there.”

The championship game is undeniably the biggest draw of the tournament, with the stands as filled as they are for any game, regardless of the teams playing. Phillips said the championship game crowd draws people from the neighborhood in addition to hardcore softball fans.

“For the championship game, you get a pretty broad audience,” Phillips said. “You get casual people from the neighborhood and then, of course, all the softball families from this neighborhood. But I’ve seen a lot of [American Softball Association] and [National Softball Association] people come and watch the games as well. It’s a big thing for softball, especially at that level.”

The Junior Softball World Series begins Sunday with a 2:45 p.m. matchup between the Asian champion and the U.S. Central champion. The championship game will be held on Sunday, Aug. 20 at 1 p.m. All games are held at Everest Park in Kirkland.

PointStreak (Live Updates) link: http://www.pointstreak.com/baseball/scoreboard.html?leagueid=686

JSWS site: http://www.jrsoftballworldseries.com/index.asp

Little League World Series site: http://www.littleleague.org/worldseries/index.html