Matome Lebea

Matome Lebea

Gauteng men and Western Province (WP) women dominated the national championships of Softball South Africa (SSA) that ended on Saturday in Edenvale.

Eastern Gauteng (EG) beat their provincial home boys Central Gauteng (CG) 3-1 to clinch the major men title, while Central had a chance to redeem their already tarnished image at the expense of their fellow brothers Gauteng North (GN) who they walloped 8-0 to win the reserve men category in this week-long tournament.

Last year's winners in both men categories, KwaZulu-Natal, could only manage a semifinal place.

WP women showed last year was no fluke when they defended their titles. In the major category, they beat GN 7-5 and their reserve side further rubbed GN's faces in it thrashing them 4-1.

Guillo "Sdumo" Marapyane, SSA president said despite bad weather that threatened the event, everything went well.

"Following the two days of showers we were forced to restructure our programme and also change from the original double round-robin system to a single one. Immediately after the round-robin we switched to the page system where the top four teams play against each other, that is position 1 against 4 and 2 against 3," Marapyane said yesterday adding that finalists in both categories showed improvement and they were satisfied that the coaches had done their home-work.