Maggie Lynn tried playing softball with the other girls. But they just weren’t into it like she was.
“They didn’t pay enough attention,” Maggie says, seated next to her mom, Kristin, during a recent afternoon.
Lynn, now 9 years old, started playing T-ball when she was 5 and has been playing with the boys ever since. She played two seasons of softball while also playing hardball, but in addition to the lack of competition, she didn’t like the underhand pitching. She wanted to pitch herself. And she wanted to throw hard.
Lynn’s not the only girl playing with the boys these days. In the Northside Cal Ripken league, she’s one of 23 females. Countrywide, the trend is growing as well. Two girls participated in last year’s Little League World Series, youth baseball’s premier event. And one of them, Mo’ne Davis, made a splash as the first girl ever to throw a shutout in the Series.
Lynn is doing pretty well for herself locally. While nearly two dozen girls play ball at Northside, 13 of them are in T-ball, and only a handful make it beyond that level. Lynn was a standout pitcher in the minor league division during the regular season and was the only girl to make the Northside Cal Ripken league’s all-star team this year.
“We took 14 players, and she was one of the best 14,” says Eric Lane, who in addition to skippering the Northside all-stars is head coach of the Charlottesville High School boy’s varsity team. “She’s pitched nine innings for us. She even pitched in one of our state tournament wins.”
Lane says that at the lower levels, girls are typically as advanced physically as the boys—sometimes they’re even more advanced. At the “major” level, the top ranks of little league, Northside features only one girl, Maya Winterhoff. But Charlie Jones, who has coached both Lynn and Winterhoff, says the girls are completely capable of holding their own.
“Maggie and Maya show that girls can compete at the highest level against the boys,” he says. “They have proven that gender doesn’t determine skill level. While size can be beneficial in baseball, it is not nearly as important as it can be in other sports. Size is less important than hand-eye coordination, speed, quickness and reaction time.”
What’s more, Jones says the girls fit in socially with the boys—no one treats them any differently. Lynn and her mother agree with that sentiment.
“We love it,” Kristin Lynn says. “Sometimes I feel for her being the only girl, but it doesn’t really bother her. Until you see her ponytail hanging out or her braid, no one knows she’s a girl.”
Still, age tends to thin out the ranks of girls in hardball leagues. Lynn herself says she’d like to continue playing with the boys but seems skeptical. That, of course, bums her out, because for softball pitchers, “it’s like 63 [mph] is like their fastball.”
Is Lynn the next Mo’ne Davis? Maybe not. But until she feels like the other girls are taking the game more seriously, she’s not giving up her spot on the field with the boys.