Interview with Toros Softball

An interview with Xabi Hernandez who is the manager of the new ESSL team Toros from Switzerland.

When was your team founded?
The team was founded in 2014 by Xabi Hernandez

In which city is your team located?
The team is not based in a city. We don’t have a field to play on. So we are participating in the Swiss Slowpitch League playing always as a visitor team. We have an arrangement with the baseball team based in Bern to use their field for trainings. Our players are coming from different parts of Switzerland like Lausanne, Geneva, Zurich and Bern.

Give us a short history of your team
Toros Softball is a mixed team of Venezuelan and Suisse players who love the sport and traveling. The team was founded last year as many people were interested in playing softball whereas having fun and social contacts are the primary goals. We have a mix between former baseball players and people without previous experience.

What do you expect from this season and what are your goals?
We expect a really hard battle to get one of the spots for the A finals in Ljubljana, Slovenia. They are really good teams in the competition. Our goal is to be one of the top 4 teams in the league.

What do you think of the ESSL?
I think it is a very well organized league. Everybody is taking care of every detail and trying to improve day by day every aspect to develop the ESSL to the most important league for Slowpitch Softball in Europe. The teams are very competitive as we could see last year in the finals in Linz, Austria. We are really happy to have the opportunity to be part of this project.

How do you see the future of the ESSL?
We see the league expanding in Europe, getting more teams involved from different countries. In the future we would like to see more regional groups, something like confederations with a final championship tournament where all the group champions are participating.

Pictures © Toros Softball