Welcome to the Redbacks Softball Club website.
We are an amateur, mixed sex
Softball team based in Nottingham, England.
We have been established since 1997 and play in the East Midlands Softball League.
We play softball throughout the year. The outdoor summer league runs from April to October, with games taking place locally and various optional tournaments around the country. In winter we play indoor Softball at various locations around Nottingham.
Our current team consists of 15+ men and women, a real mixture of ages and backgrounds, from all over the world. We are always looking for new players to join us!
We are always looking for men and women aged 16+ plus to play in our team. If you want to do something a bit different, get some exercise and be social, then Softball is for you! No prior experience is needed and all fitness levels are welcome.
We train on a Monday evening at Grove Farm on Lenton Industrial Estate.
Games usually take place on a Thursday evening or Sunday around Nottinghamshire.
If you do decide to join the team there is an initial £15 joining fee, which covers registration and kit, and then £40 a season which covers all league matches and training sessions. Alternativly, you can pay as you go at £2 for a practice session and £3 for a game.
All the kit (bats, gloves, helmets ect.) are provided by the team, but feel free to bring your own along if you have any.
If you are interested in joining the team, or would just like to come to a free training session or game, please visit our contact page for ways to get in touch.
In May 1997 a flyer advertising a new softball team was put up around the Inland Revenue offices. A few people turned up for the first training session, though nobody had ever seen softball, let alone played it. The next week we had our first match. Beaten, but narrowly, by Pedigree Petfoods. That was the beginning of our team!
The next major hurdle was that we had to come up with a team name. Most of us wore red t-shirts for that first game so it was decided we should have something red in our name; after some discussion we came up with Red Rascals. Not long afterwards we decided we didn't like that name. At the time of this discussion we were looking at a list of baseball teams - not many of us knew the teams then; and it was said "There's a team here called Reds, why not just change our name to that?" Everybody seemed happy and so the Reds were born.
We played a few games in that first season - not winning any - and welcomed many non-Revenue people to the team. The league was set up in 1998 and so we were one of the inaugural teams. Our first game of the first league season was against Boots. We’d played a game with them in 1997 so knew their strengths, but also their weaknesses. We managed to pitch their big hitter out of the game and somehow gained our first ever win. It was the most fantastic feeling. We didn't do too well for the rest of the season, but we beat the University team twice.
Next season we went to Manchester for the Coors tournament as the Reds. This is where the first proper team photo was taken (see above)
A few seasons later people weren't happy with the name so we had another discussion and after a democratic vote Redbacks were born, and in 2001 we were the first winners of The Ashes (the Pyro's plate competition).