Hello, I’m Berend Mannessen and after my Military Service in 1968, I started to play Baseball with my soccer friends.
When my two daughters started to play Peanutball (now BeeBall) I started to coach with this team. Here started a long career of coaching, when my daughters grew up I coached all their youth teams and in 1985 I started coaching the first women's team of my home club Hoofddorp Pioniers.
I coached here for 20 years with the help of my friend and pitching coach Piet Schipper.
In 2011 the head coach of the Dutch National Women's Team, Graig Montvidas, asked me to help him with his Youth program Red-White-Blue and to assist with the National Team, of course, I said "Yesssss!" because this was for me “The Icing On The Cake”. I did this till 2015 and in this period I was with 2 World Championships, Whitehorse 2012 and Haarlem 2014, both ended in 6th place.
In 2013 we played the European Championship in Prague and the Team won for the third time in a row The European Title.
During this period Craig, Karen Marr, and I organized every year the May softball youth camps, and these were a great success especially due to the excellent training given by the Dutch National Team Players. All this under the guise of National Union KNBSB, but unfortunately this was the last time in 2015.
Now I help the team coach of my granddaughter Alicia en will be at the ESCA Camp for the fifth time and looking forward to meeting you all and having a wonderful time together.
Berend Mannessen
Read more about ESCA & the EBSCA Training Camp here.
