2008 WUC Baseball: Update
March 14th, 2007
Presentation of the 4th WUC Baseball at the IBAF Congress
Members of the Organising Committee of the 4th World University Baseball Championship, which will be hosted in the Czech Republic, promoted their event with a presentation at the recently held congress of the International Baseball Federation (IBAF). They will also be present at the European Congress at the end of March. So far two possible periods for staging the event are considered, i.e. July 17th to 26th or July 18th to 27th, 2008. There is a huge interest in organizing the Championship from many cities and thus the Organizing Committee faces a difficult task to decide about the host city. The following cities are interested: - Brno; - Ostrava; - Prague; - Liberec; - Olomouc; - Choceò.
All the applying cities have the appropriate stadium to host the Championship. The OC is awaiting a certification from the Confederation of the European Baseball, which will be a helpful guideline for making the decision about the best location. However, the uncertain number of participating teams complicates the choice of the place, so the OC is working with a variant of ten teams; the maximum is twelve, although in 2004 only seven teams participated. As it is not clear how many teams will enter, the OC isn’t able to decide how many fields will be necessary for now. Nevertheless, the main goal is to have 12 teams participating. The following countries already communicated their intention to participate: Chinese Taipei, Cuba, Italy, Japan, USA and off course host Czech Republic. The President of the Czech University Sports Association and the Vice President for Sport of the Czech Olympic Committee, Mr. František Dvoøák personally participates in the preparations. The Czech government took over the patronage of the Championship. The President of the Czech Republic will take over the patronage in the foreseeable future.
