History will be made when the University of The Bahamas (UB) Athletics Department hosts the first high school girls softball prospect event on the Banker’s Field at the Baillou Hills Sporting Complex on Saturday.
UB will be the first to ever host something of this collaborative magnitude specific to the game of softball in The Bahamas.
Spearheading the event is Yvana McDonald, UB’s Women’s Softball Head Coach. The evaluation will feature 35 girls from grades 11 and 12 from both the private and public schools, who will be presenting their skills to a collegiate audience.
“We don’t have a space right now where we see both private and public schools evaluated in a capacity similar to nationals and compete on the same teams. Being able to do that at the university level for purposes to stay within the university system honestly gives an opportunity for students in The Bahamas, in Nassau, to see the University of The Bahamas as a viable option,” said McDonald.
McDonald and her coaching staff will be evaluating speed, agility, exit velocity off the bat, speed of players’ arms, throwing velocity, and other offensive and defensive aspects of the game.
During the month of May, McDonald handed out ‘Royal Tickets’ to the athletes in New Providence at their schools, and said it was an awesome experience. Schools that have confirmed and registered their athletes to come out are St. Augustine’s College, Queen’s College, St. Andrew’s International School, Kingsway Academy, Government High School (GHS), C.C. Sweeting, C.I. Gibson, C.V. Bethel, Doris Johnson, Anatol Rodgers and C.R. Walker.
“Some of the athletes had no idea, so being able to work with those coaches undercover and pop up into the school and give it to them, there’s this joy and anticipation,” McDonald said. “It was like saying somebody sees me, somebody knows me and somebody is giving me an opportunity that I, at some point, probably didn’t think I had.”
Coach McDonald, who started the position of UB’s Women’s Softball Head Coach in early April, had a busy two months restarting the women’s softball program at the University of The Bahamas. She has had three tryouts, including one in Grand Bahama, and she toured schools in New Providence and Grand Bahama, as she looks to rebuild UB’s roster.
