Kate Fahy remembers being selected to her first Little League district baseball all-star team.
It meant a lot. A girl who’d initially worried about fitting in when joining her Little League team was being recognized as not just part of her team but one of the area’s best players.
“It was a huge accomplishment for me,” Fahy said.
But what really stands out to her about the experience is her dad relaying telling her he’d met a coach from a different team there who’d told him another girl who’d been selected for the honor was the best player on his team.
That was Mina Hwangbo.
Now both girls are a year or two away from likely playing varsity high school baseball.
This past weekend, Fahy and Hwangbo further solidified their already deep commitments to a game neither sees as just for boys.
The two were among more than 90 girls selected to participate in MLB’s and USA Baseball’s Trailblazer Series, a baseball training program held at the Jackie Robinson Training Complex in Vero Beach, Florida.
The program launched in 2017 but is under a bigger spotlight with women beginning to stream into baseball through the Women’s Professional Baseball League that launched this year and the participation of a few women in the high-level-baseball-meets-entertainment Banana Ball, which is selling out large professional parks, including Yankee Stadium.
Baseball is no longer just a boys sport
While Little League Baseball, pressured by changing times and lawsuits, including from the National Organization of Women, ended in 1974 its ban on allowing girls to play, the door that opened that day has never seemed truly wide open.
Girls who start out in baseball often gravitate to softball, not so much because they like that game better, but there’s less acceptance of girls playing with and against boys, especially as they get older. Softball offers a fitting-in comfort level often absent up the ladder in baseball.
“I was definitely nervous when I first started playing (baseball),” Fahy said. ” ‘Baseball is a boys sport’ ,” I’d always been told.”
What the girls did at the Trailblazer Series
Hwangbo, an eighth-grader at Dobbs Ferry Middle School, who played last year for Dobbs Ferry’s modified baseball team and now is on the Eagles’ JV, and Fahy, an eighth-grader at Hackley School, who’s on Hackley’s modified baseball team, received hours of instruction, as well as played in game s in Florida.
After arriving in Florida April 17, the two, whose passion for the sport is evident in the fact both play on multiple baseball teams and have zero plans to quit, set out to further hone their games
Before being selected, both, as required, provided videos showing their skills.
And make no mistake, the two have skills.
Hwangbo, for instance, catches, plays third and pitches for Dobbs Ferry’s JV. You can’t do any of that without a strong arm.
Hwangbo started, as most youngers in the sport, playing T-ball. She tried softball but didn’t really like it. Several years ago, she joined Little League Baseball.
Unlike many, she didn’t encounter opposition, either subtle or overt.
“I was pretty lucky. I grew up in a good place. One of the coaches asked me if I wanted to play,” Hwangbo said.
Most pressure she feels seems largely self-imposed and born from the fact she’s a girl playing what many still regard as a boys sport.
“I definitely feel pressure. I feel I have to be better to be considered somewhat good. I (also) feel I don’t want to let the team down,” she said.
Her introduction to Little League, though, couldn’t have gone better as, without saying a word, she loudly proclaimed she belonged and was good — very good.
“My first game I showed up late and was placed in the outfield,” Hwangbo recalled. “(Off) the first pitch, I made a sliding catch in the outfield. It made me really proud. People (watching) wanted to know who I was.”
Now many people know who she is.
Hwangbo, 13, ticked off a list of four baseball teams she’s on, one being an all-girls tournament team, The NY Wonders, a travel only, all-girls team on which Hwangbo also plays.
Both girls have benefitted from playing with a supportive brother. Hwangbo’s brother, Ian, played on Dobbs Ferry’s modified team with her and is now a freshman on Dobbs Ferry’s varsity.
“He always has encouraged me and been there for me,” said Hwangbo, whose goal is to join him on varsity when she’s a sophomore.
Fahy, who recently turned 14, said she “kind of dabbled “with softball from 5 to 10 years old. After she began playing baseball, she never looked back. It wasn’t just that her twin brother, Jack, was on her team, nor that two other girls were on it. It was that baseball resonated with her like softball never had.
“It was very different. It’s two different sports,” said Fahy, who embraces baseball’s storied history and says, “Baseball is such a beautiful, old sport..”
Now she plays with Jack at Hackley, as well as on “tons of other teams.”
Like Hwangbo, she enjoys family support.
Her grandfather, who grew up playing stickball in Ireland, is one of her fans.
“He strongly encouraged me to play, if that’s what I loved,” she said.
And it certainly is.
“Baseball is my sport. I kind of eat, breathe and live it,” said Fahy, who was named to the Irish National 13-17-year-old baseball squad this past winter after participating in a tryout in New York. Fahy, who, while in the Elmsford Little League, made three district all-star teams over three years, plans to play with her otherwise all-boys Irish team in a tournament this summer.
But she and Hwangbo see what they’re doing today as just groundwork for long futures in the game.
“Especially with the women’s baseball league opening up, I definitely see a future for me (to play professionally),” Hwangbo said. “It’s something I’d really hope to do if I could.”
Fahy, who appeared earlier this month on The Kelly Clarkson Show to talk about girls in baseball, had during the program, mentioned possibly playing one day for the WPBL.
But she isn’t shutting the door on going in another direction in baseball.
“To be the first girl in Major League Baseball is kind of the goal,” Fahy said.
Nancy Haggerty covers sports for The Journal News/lohud.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Westchester girls in MLB program show baseball’s not just for boys
Reporting by Nancy Haggerty, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
