Daughters tossed baseballs with their moms as they warmed up for the finale of Warren Park’s first all-girls baseball league Sunday.
“I need ladies to have the ability to play within the Main Leagues,” declared Weezy Gansner of Edgewater.
The 9-year-old is a spitting picture of her mother, Rachel Gansner, 43, who recalled early desires of being the primary girl within the NBA earlier than dedicating herself to softball in center college and discovering girls’s baseball after school.
“For me, it was simpler to really feel profitable in baseball as a result of I might throw and hit the (baseball) a lot additional and quicker (than a softball),” mentioned the mom of two. She based the all-girls league to make sure Weezy and her friends have a chance to thrive in baseball from a younger age.
“I’m typically enthusiastic about altering among the stereotypes now we have about ladies in all sports activities. Baseball and softball is a superb place to start out as a result of it’s the one sport the place the counterpart for women is definitely a unique sport,” mentioned Gansner, who’s no stranger to the bias. She coached her 11-year-old son Georgie’s Little League staff into the state match this summer season regardless of going through skepticism about her {qualifications}.
The all-girls league she began this fall on the park within the West Ridge neighborhood is designed to catch ladies earlier than they’d usually transition from co-ed baseball leagues to softball round age 10. And the curiosity within the inaugural season was bigger than Gansner anticipated.
Twenty-three ladies have been divided amongst 4 groups: the Blue Sox, Comets, Peaches and Belles. They’ve had weekly practices and performed scrimmages each Sunday, the place Georgie was an enthusiastic and diligent announcer.
“I need to get these younger ladies earlier than they consider that there is no such thing as a area for them to remain in baseball, to point out them that they belong,” mentioned Gansner, recalling how a woman requested her if she might apply pitching in the beginning of the season. The participant mentioned the coach of her co-ed staff had solely allowed boys to pitch throughout video games.
It reaffirmed Gansner’s motivation to provide ladies a targeted area to ask questions and construct expertise. She hopes they’ll have extra confidence once they return to their co-ed groups.
“I need to be taught increasingly. I simply need to get higher,” mentioned Blue Sox participant Maya SinhaRoy-Wright of West Rogers Park. The 8-year-old had been watching her older brother play baseball, so it simply made sense to her that she’d play the identical sport.
The brand new league is simply too small for a standard match, so Sunday’s closing occasion was a collection of drills showcasing the batting, hitting and catching expertise the 23 baseball gamers have been studying.
No matter their jersey colours, ladies cheered one another on. In the end, they’re all on the identical small however mighty staff establishing a spot for women in baseball.
“You ladies completed one thing that has by no means been completed on this metropolis earlier than,” Gansner mentioned earlier than every lady obtained a pin to commemorate them as trailblazers.
That is just the start, Gansner instructed the Tribune. She has visions for a bigger all-girls league at Warren Park with extra groups and divisions for women of all ages.
