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

