As part of its pre-season training, Caserta Softball Club, this year, opted to choose Malta for a training camp in conjunction with the Mellieha Tigers Softball Club (Malta). The Caserta team is a 'Serie A' Softball Team residing in a town neighbouring Naples in Italy.
The president, Ing. Michele Tarabuso has presided the club since 1998. This club has won both Serie B and A championships, with its first appearance in Serie A1 in 2004. aserta lost the grand final Italian championships in 2006, whilst placing fifth in both 2007 and 2008. This year, it is considered to be very close to winning the Serie A1 league. The team is composed of dual nationality players, Italian players and also foreign ones. Four of the Italian players are ex-national players. Caserta prides itself with being the only club in Italy that has its own softball stadium. Other clubs have to use premises owned by local councils.
The team coach is Enrico Obletter an ex-national team pitching coach for the years 1990-2006. He has been coaching for the past 30 years. He was born in Australia, having an Italian father and grew up there. He's an ex-baseball professional player and has been coaching teams for the Serie A since 1990. He has won five national championships in Italy as well as five European championships.
The Roman team captain, Giovanna Palermi, is the only player who has won 10 national championships with six different teams. She is an ex-Olympian with the Italian national team. She represented the Italian national team for 200 matches.
One of the foreign players, Melissa Sanchez, is spending her fourth season in Italy, but this is her first year with the Caserta team. She has previously played with Forli and Macerata and she has won an Italian championship. She is an outstanding all rounder and hails from Riverside, California, USA.
The dual passport holder, Lisa Birocci is originally from Iowa. She was in the Italian national team during the 2005 and 2006 seasons. This is her third year with Caserta after taking two years off when she got married. She is a very powerful pitcher, considered as the anchor of the Caserta team pitching staff.
The Mellieha Tigers Softball Club (Malta) (MTSC) was founded in September 2007 and is at present striving to launch the game of softball on the local sports scene. This club boasts of a fully qualified Italian coach, Roberto Andolfi, and is made up of two teams: the Senior and Junior teams. Regular training is held every Saturday and Sunday mornings during which matches are occasionally held between the two teams since in Malta there is no national softball championship.
Mr Roberto Andolfi has been in Malta since 2006, previous to which he was coaching the Macerata Softball Seniors Team (2005) and Urbs Roma Softball Seniors Team (2004) with which he has won the second place in the National League Serie A1 and B respectively. Roberto Andolfi has coached at least eight different Softball seniors teams including Lazio S.S., San Remo and Nettuno through which he has established a trail of achievements in the Italian National League.
The MTSC has plans to expand further in this field and has already made contacts with Nettuno and Castel-Franco of Rome where the MTSC will be hosted during the first two weeks of July, this year. In return, the MTSC will host Nettuno and Castel-Franco on their visit to Malta in 2010.
The MTSC committee thanked the main sponsors, namely Island Beverages, Andolfi Glass Ideas, Amici Miei, Solid Base Laboratory Ltd., M.Z. Investment
Services Ltd and all the other sponsors without whose help this wonderful experience would not have been possible.