Taylor Daniels: Shattering the grass ceiling: the first
women’s collegiate club baseball championship
JEREMY WEINE/Daily
Alana Richardson scored Michigan’s first goal in its loss to Penn State.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
10 — Wednesday, March 30, 2022
Sports
Growing up as the only girl on my
youth baseball team, of course one
of my favorite movies was A League
of Their Own. The 1992
classic
and
highest-
grossing baseball movie
of all time depicts the
All-American Girls Pro-
fessional Baseball League
(AAGPBL), which ran
from 1943 to 1954, fea-
tured teams from the
Midwest and gave over
600 women the opportu-
nity to play professional
baseball. I always won-
dered why I had to play
with boys, instead of with
girls like Marla Hooch and Kit and
Dottie Hinson, my heroes from the
movie.
In 2015, when I was 12 years old,
I found my first opportunity to play
with and against other girls at the
inaugural Baseball For All National
girls’ baseball tournament in Orlan-
do, Florida. There, I joined over 100
other girls aged 13 and under to play
baseball. For almost all of us, it was
the first time that we had been sur-
rounded by athletes who shared
that love and passion for the game,
along with the hard-won strength
and resilience that resulted from
being the only girl on the field.
Since then, I’ve played at every
Nationals and have seen firsthand
the exponential growth of the wom-
en’s game. The event has expanded
to include over 500 girls, in five age
divisions, representing nearly forty
states. Baseball For All has built a
nation-wide community of girls and
women from ages 8 to 19 who play
baseball, and they aren’t stopping at
the youth level.
Last weekend, for the first
time since Vassar College’s team
was disbanded over one hundred
years ago, women’s collegiate
baseball teams faced each other
at the inaugural Baseball For All
College Club Baseball Champion-
ship.
Ballplayers
from
Montclair
State University, Occidental Col-
lege, California State University
at Fullerton and the University
of Washington took the field at
the Major League Baseball Youth
Academy in Compton,
California on March
20, making history and
breaking the grass ceil-
ing.
“Ever since I was a
kid, watching A League
of Their Own, I always
thought, ‘I wish I was
alive during this time,
so I could play women’s
baseball,’ ” University
of Washington women’s
club baseball founder
and first base/pitcher
Katie Firestone said. “So to be
able to actually have an opportu-
nity to have something to do with
something like that … was amaz-
ing.”
Firestone, who had grown up
playing baseball informally and
then in a Sunday men’s league in
high school, originally thought
about trying out for her universi-
ty’s men’s club baseball team. But
as a first year out-of-state student
from California, she didn’t want
to go about it alone.
When Firestone researched the
men’s club baseball team prior to
tryouts, there was a woman in a
photo on the team’s Instagram
page. After reaching out, Fire-
stone discovered that she was
Maggie Gallagher, the team’s first
ever female club president. Gal-
lagher had played on the team for
two years after playing on the UW
varsity softball’s Women’s Col-
lege World Series team. Firestone
connected with Gallagher, who
is now the general manager and
head coach of UW’s women’s club
baseball team.
Gallagher opened doors for the
team in the Seattle area, help-
ing them secure a practice facil-
ity, land sponsorships and garner
media attention. And with that
publicity came more players, lead-
ing to a final roster size of nine-
teen, up from the original two.
The Huskies ended up tak-
ing home the trophy, after going
undefeated in the tournament,
scoring a total of 48 runs and
beating Occidental College in the
championship game, 19-3.
“Based on how much hype
we’ve gotten, we have more girls
who are interested from the Uni-
versity of Washington,” Firestone
said. “Next year, I see tryouts,
maybe a travel team and a prac-
tice team, practice t-shirts, more
sponsors, more hype, just con-
tinuing to build this community
of women at UW who love base-
ball.
“I think that the coolest part
about it for me is that when you
come to college, you’re trying to
find your community. I feel like I
was a part of starting a different
club that has created this commu-
nity for these girls.”
The girls baseball community
is the most accepting place I have
ever known. And bringing that
community to the college level,
where so many students are try-
ing to find their place, is some-
thing incredible.
“It was something that I knew I
needed, I just didn’t know exactly
where to find it,” Occidental Col-
lege freshman pitcher and catcher
Siena Jarrin said. “Continuing to
have that baseball part of my life
is really important to me.”
A softball player since she
could walk, Jarrin tried baseball
for the first time when Occiden-
tal College formed its first team,
even learning to pitch in time for
the championships.
“The fact is, baseball does exist
for women,” Jarrin said. “And it’s
an opportunity that you can have
if you’re new, if you’re not new,
and it could be something that’s
really fun for a lot of people.”
The key to growth in women’s
college baseball is having new
athletes try the sport. Right now,
there is a severe drop in female
participation in baseball when
they hit the high school level.
According to Baseball For All, the
100,000 girls in the sport drops to
1,000 due to more high school and
collegiate opportunities in other
sports. A number of my women’s
baseball friends have elected to
pursue opportunities in track
and field, softball or basketball
because they can play longer.
That’s not to say that women
cannot succeed in men’s high
school or collegiate baseball;
there is a record eight women are
currently playing for men’s colle-
giate baseball teams this spring.
For those who aren’t able to play
at the varsity level, they can join
the men’s club baseball team and
continue to play the game they
love there. That’s what my friend
Beth Greenwood did at the Uni-
versity of Rochester, and it even-
tually led to her earning a spot as
the first American female NCAA
catcher on the Yellow Jacket team
last year.
Currently, boys and men have
the opportunity to play all the way
from tee ball, to high school, col-
lege and beyond. The only thing
that limits them is their talent.
Girls, regardless of their – often
considerable – talent, are often
told that they should quit baseball
simply because they are girls.
“By creating a pipeline that
becomes equal to what the boys
already have, gender equity in
baseball can exist,” Siegal said.
“(Baseball For All) supports co-ed
baseball at the college level, but
know that more women will get
an opportunity if there is wom-
en’s baseball as sport for students
to aim towards.”
In order to become an official
NCAA championship sport, an
emerging sport for women must
have a minimum of 40 varsity
programs and demonstrate via-
bility through consistent league
play. Baseball For All, while
encouraging teams to start all
over the country, will be focusing
on the Los Angeles area in order
to form a league and have con-
sistent competition, similar to a
college club softball league. This
will help it reach its goal of hav-
ing 8-12 teams in 2023 and 40-50
teams in five years.
“We showed that our model
works,” Siegal said. “There are
women on campuses that want to
play baseball, and there are stu-
dents willing to make it happen.
So our only limit now is funding
and exposure.”
Here at the University of
Michigan, there is not currently
a women’s club baseball team. If
women want to play a bat-and-
ball sport, they can either try out
for the men’s club baseball team
or the women’s club softball team.
Similar to Firestone, I had to
decide whether to try out as the
only girl on the men’s club base-
ball team or try out for the club
softball team. I chose the club
softball team and have loved
my experience. I have found a
community of women that are
like family to me, who all work
towards a goal bigger than our-
selves.
What women deserve is the
option to do that through playing
baseball.
That’s why I’m planning to
start a women’s club baseball
team here at Michigan in the fall.
I hope to create an additional
experience for women to play
club baseball, and plan to sched-
ule the women’s baseball team so
that athletes don’t have to choose
between the sports.
The friendships I have made
throughout the eight years I have
been involved in women’s base-
ball are among the strongest rela-
tionships in my life. My closest
friends are the girls I get to see
only a few weeks a year at tourna-
ments or elite development pro-
grams. The moments we spend
together on and off the field are
the most memorable experiences
I have. Simply put, these girls are
my people.
I have been dedicated to grow-
ing women’s baseball since I
played at Nationals for the first
time. In 2016, I co-founded Illi-
nois Girls Baseball and we ran our
first two years of practices with
less than ten girls. In fall 2020, we
held the first-ever female youth
baseball league in the state of
Illinois, and our organization has
grown to over one hundred par-
ticipants.
It is incredible to watch the
next generation of female base-
ball players growing up playing
on all-girls youth baseball teams,
when at their age, I was the only
girl in the league. They see a
female MLB general manager, an
on-field MLB coach, a low-A man-
ager, a director of Major League
operations, a professional draft
pick, and so many more women in
professional baseball.
And with the creation of the
University of Michigan women’s
club baseball team, I want them
to see women playing collegiate
baseball, on both men’s and on
women’s teams.
Collegiate women’s basketball,
now a well-established sport, pro-
vides a framework for what wom-
en’s club baseball could become.
Fifty years ago, Immaculata Uni-
versity won the first-ever national
women’s college basketball cham-
pionship, hosted by the Associa-
tion for Intercollegiate Athletics
for Women (AIAW). Ten years
later, the NCAA sponsored the
first NCAA women’s college bas-
ketball championship.
Now, we know women’s bas-
ketball as a sport with a pres-
ence on every stage: Olympic,
professional,
collegiate,
club,
high school and youth. Women’s
baseball in the United States has
a national team and a widespread
youth level, but it’s missing the
intermediates.
“It took women’s basketball 10
years to get there from when they
first started playing club,” Fires-
tone said. “I think that with social
media and the support women in
baseball have right now, we could
do it sooner.”
In order to have a league of
their own, women’s baseball
needs to gain NCAA status.
TAYLOR
DANIELS