After two days of tough fights with 15 teams from various universities in Taiwan, Tamkang’s MBA softball team proudly took home the 13th Championship of the National MBA Cup on the 20th of November. On top of the champion cup, the team also brought back a Home Run Award and the Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award, which were won by Huang Hong-hsing, the team captain, and Cheng Chung-hsing, the left fielder respectively.

MBA Softball Team consists of 25 grad students from the Graduate Institute of Business Management and with its 17 cheerleaders cheering them on, it fought hard all the way against some strong opponents to the semi-finals in the span of one and half days. In the finals, amid heavy rain, it excelled further to beat the MBA team from the National Yunlin University of Science & Technology with the score of 4:3. This victory was particularly sweet as our team was cheered twice due to a misread of the time by the organizer. Through this mistake, the game ended 10 minutes too early, so the last ten minutes had to be replayed to make up the lost time. However, in reality, nothing was lost, as TKU could savor the winning moment twice!

Huang, the team captain, recounted the success of his team back to one year ago, when no one on the team had any clue of what softball was. Yet, they all knew one thing, and that was to train hard, to work hard, and to hit hard, despite their heavy study loads. He also thanked Cheng Wan-ting, the manager of their team who never missed any of their practice and thus inspired everyone to keep up with their training. He himself is a good example of “practice makes perfect.” He did not know much about softball a year or so ago, when he joined the team, but through dedicated practice, he has matured into a strong and reliable batter that won him the Home Run Award this time. He also praised the magical performance of the left fielder, this year’s MVP, Huang Hung-hsin, and Hsieh Cheng-yu and Chang Cheng-bang, the pitchers of the team for their dominant presence.

Players aside, the 17 cheerleaders, led by Hsu Sheng-wan, were also the contributing factors to the victory. They not only inspired their own team, but also distracted their opponents with all kinds of tricks, sounds and colors. Hsu, who nearly lost all her voice, is already thinking ahead about next year’s championship. She is confident that with her and her team-mates cheering on, TKU will remain unbeatable. (~ Ying-hsueh Hu )