January 30, 2013 at 5:54 p.m.
Sea Venture 19 league titles in 19 tries: The best ever?
SVOS was synonymous with softball excellence. Since 2001, SVOS played in 11 co-ed leagues and won all 11 championships. It also won nine of the 11 playoff titles.
When a men's division was started in 2003, SVOS entered a team and won all eight league titles and seven play-off championships.
An impressive run by any standard 19 league titles in 19 seasons and 16 of 19 play-off titles.
Danny Cook founded the team in 1997 as a B Division club. It wasn't until 2000 that they won the B division and title and earning promotion. It took one season for them to get their feet wet at the higher level until they became the juggernaut everyone now knows them as.
Cook was playing for Watford Sports Club, but when they didn't put a team in the summer league, he decided to start Sea Venture - and softball was never the same.
Cook added he was "shocked" at the number of championships his team won.
"I was shocked that we never lost a regular season title. I didn't realize we had done that - wow!"
He said what was surprising was the league wasn't filled with pushovers.
"Snowballs was the dominant team when we came up and they did beat us twice in the playoffs. The difference in winning the league titles, even against Tuff Dogs now, is that we don't lose games we're not supposed to lose. We never lose games against teams that aren't considered our equal. If we were going to lose a regular season game, it was going to be to Snowballs back then, or Tuff Dogs now."
Cook said his main rivals would falter to the lesser lights of the A Division.
He said a key to winning all those title was "the commitment of all the players. We basically had the same core of players over the entire run. We lost a guy here and there and replaced them, but we've basically it's been the same guys for the last seven years."
Justin Barritt, manager for top rival Tuff Dogs, said: "They're the closest thing to a dynasty. They always brought their A game when they needed to."
Barritt added: "It won't be the same. They've had a good run. It's a shame to see them leave. They go out on top. We've never beaten them (for a playoff or league title)."
He added that it just wasn't about winning title for Sea Venture. "They've given back as well through umpiring and finding other people to go overseas and play." With Sea Venture out of the way, his club should be one of the league favourites, but Barritt said Hit & Sit should also contend for the men's title.
"They beat us in the semi-finals last year. They have a nice core of players. This should open things up. Island Construction have a nice young team coming up. If they get a couple more guys they could challenge. This just opens the league right up."
Cook said he's not retiring from softball. He plans on playing for Tuff Dogs this summer and taking the Sea Dogs - a combination of players from Sea Venture and Tuff Dogs - to Orlando to compete in a Disney tournament.
Most of his players will be spread around the rest of the league's teams.
"Most of the guys will be playing for somebody. It's not that they didn't want to play, it's that they didn't want to commit to playing every game. As you get older and have kids and get married, you have commitments. We had probably five guys who put softball first, where back in the old days we had 10 guys who put softball first.
"Now with kids and marriages, softball is the number two, number three, number four priority. It doesn't mean that anyone on our team loves softball less, it just means they love other things more."[[In-content Ad]]
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