USA Softball vs Japan considered Top 10 Greatest Rivalry in Summer Olympics History
8/2/2012
OKLAHOMA CITY—The USA Softball Women’s National Team was included in a recent Yahoo Sports article on the Top 10 Greatest Rivalries in the history of the Summer Olympics the Amateur Softball Association (ASA) of America announced today. USA Softball’s 1996-2008 Olympic contests with Japan was one of only two team competitions selected for the article. The remainder of the selections were rivalries between individuals.
Click here to read the Yahoo Sports article
“Although women’s softball is no longer a part of the Olympics, U.S. and Japan went head-to-head in some memorable matchups,” said Yahoo Sports contributor Patrick Hattman. “The U.S. captured the first three golds but Japan finally got its Olympic title in the sport by upsetting the heavily-favored Americans in 2008.”
Despite the sport’s exclusion from the Olympic Games, the USA versus Japan softball rivalry is just as strong as ever. The two teams competed four times in other events over the course of the 2012 season with each team winning twice. In July, the rivals met in the finals of the International Softball Federation (ISF) World Championship in Canada. The gold medal game went 10 innings with Japan narrowly pulling out the 2-1 victory in the end.
About ASA
The Amateur Softball Association, founded in 1933, is the National Governing Body of softball in the United States and a member of the United States Olympic Committee. The ASA has become one of the nation’s largest sports organizations and now sanctions competition in every state through a network of 76 local associations. The ASA has grown from a few hundred teams in the early days to over 210,000 teams today, representing a membership of more than three million. For more information on the ASA, visit http://www.asasoftball.com/.
About USA Softball
USA Softball is the brand created, operated and owned by the ASA that links the USA Men’s, Women’s, Junior Boys’ and Junior Girls’ National Team programs together. USA Softball is responsible for training, equipping and promoting these four National Teams to compete in international and domestic competitions. The USA Softball Women’s National Team is one of the only two women’s sports involved in the Olympic movement to capture three consecutive gold medals at the Olympic Games since 1996. The U.S. women have also won nine World Championship titles including the last seven consecutive as well as claimed six World Cup of Softball titles. For more information about USA Softball, please visit http://www.usasoftball.com/.
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