These girls just want to play ball, baseball that is

ELIZABETHTOWN, Kentucky — Ten-year-old relief pitcher Addie Kane stepped onto the mound with a bow in her hair and a four-run lead to protect.

“We’re three outs from what we came here to do,” head coach Matt Olszewski told Kane and the rest of the Florida Bolts 10-under team, in a huddle before the bottom of the sixth and final inning.

It was a national championship game, on July 11, the last of the five-day Baseball for All tournament in which 530 girls came to play their beloved sport, even if some may question why.

Founded in 2018, the Bolts organization included 41 girls from Florida and elsewhere competing in four divisions: 10U, 14U, 16U and 18U. Twelve of them live within two hours of Tampa.

On Field 4 of the Ripken Experience complex in this city 45 miles south of Louisville, Kane and her 5-0 teammates faced the equally unbeaten Georgia Peaches from suburban Atlanta.

Things got hard right away, as Kane quickly gave up a single and a double. The third batter reached first base when shortstop Blakely Olszewski’s throw pulled Liz Garcia off the bag. Garcia threw the ball home hoping to get the advancing runner, but it sailed over catcher Lauryn Baptiste’s head. Baptiste, though, hustled to throw out the batter out at second base.

The Bolts led 10-8 with one out, as about 40 fans in the stands caught their breath.

While critics argue that girls should play softball instead, the Bolts players don’t want to have to play another sport. They want to play baseball.

“Everyone’s like, ‘Oh, it’s for your own good. If you want a future, it’s going to have to be in softball. You have to play softball,’ ” said Shelby Brobst, a multi-position player for the Bolts 16U team, who was in the stands cheering for the “Baby Bolts” before the tournament began.

“Everyone said it: Parents, coaches, just strangers who see me in my uniform,” added Brobst, 15, of Lakeland.

An uphill battle

The number of girls playing organized baseball is minuscule: In the Sunshine State, just 24 girls out of 18,121 high school athletes did so this past season, according to the Florida High School Athletic Association. That’s down from 54 girls out of 17,931 the previous year. (More than 11,000 girls played high school softball each of the last two years, according to the FHSSA.)

It’s no better across the country. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, only 1,561 girls out of 480,012 athletes played baseball at that level in 2022.

If they join a boys baseball team, their girlhood is questioned. Parents yell at their sons if a girl strikes them out. Whenever boys compliment her, Brobst said, “like a girl” is always at the end.

“It makes me almost wish they wouldn’t say anything at all,” she said. “And it makes me feel bad because it still makes me feel less than. It makes me feel like I’m not as good as them.”

Anna Kimbrell, 33, a pitcher and catcher from South Carolina who won a gold medal with USA Women’s Baseball at the 2015 Pan American Games, understands.

“Why can’t you just support the girls playing baseball — because that’s what they love to do?” Kimbrell asked while at an MLB-sponsored camp for girls held in Vero Beach last month. “That’s what they want to do, and they have every right to do it.”

The criticism and skepticism are heartbreaking, said Brooke Mrozek, 38, the Bolts organization’s CEO, who lives in Homosassa, an hour north of Tampa.

“We tell them all from a very young age, ‘You can do whatever you want to do,’ ” Mrozek said. “And then all of a sudden they hit, like, 8, 9 and 10 years old, and we’re like, ‘Oh, you can do whatever you want, but that.’ We’re ripping dreams away.”

At every fundraiser, according to Mrozek, questions are asked about the girls’ gender. One woman even asked to look down one of the player’s pants to see if she was transgender.

No agony in defeat

As in any youth sports organization, allowing girls to play baseball can be expensive. Indeed, hours before the Bolts played their first game in Elizabethtown, a concern about finances almost derailed them. They still needed to give $7,000 to Baseball for All for registration fees.

Mrozek stood teary-eyed on a table at a local practice field as she asked parents to donate whatever they could to ensure the girls could play. A mother offered to donate some of her recent inheritance to cover the balance. The other parents applauded the woman, and also chipped in some money themselves.

“Thank you for coming together,” said Mrozek, her voice shaking.

With that solved, the games began, with the older Bolts squads not doing as well as the “Baby Bolts.” The 16U and 14U teams each won only one game, and both had three double-digit losses.

Brobst refused to let the won-loss records tarnish the experience. “I don’t care how much we lose by, as long as we’re getting the opportunity to have fun,” she said.

The 18U Bolts won just one of their first four games. However, because their division had just four teams, they still made the playoffs. They won their semifinal 10-6, before falling 13-2 in the championship to the Arizona Peaches.

Catcher Olivia Silkaitis, 16, traveled from Elmhurst, Illinois, to play with the 18U Bolts for a second year. Baseball for All allows girls who don’t have a local team back home to join those at the tournament who may need additional players to help fill out their rosters.

“I definitely had a good time,” Silkaitis said of playing with her new friends from Florida. “Hopefully next year, we can definitely get the championship.”

Her mother, Michelle Silkaitis, said she loved watching Olivia play baseball with girls who shared the same experiences of not fitting in on boys teams. Silkaitis said she felt frustrated and helpless when her daughter suffered. If the mother spoke up, Olivia was punished.

At Baseball For All, Michelle said, “We couldn’t be prouder of her and what she’s endured.”

Call them champs

The 10U Bolts were still two outs from what they came to do.

Clinging to a two-run lead with one out, Kane walked the next two Georgia Peaches, bringing the winning run to the plate, as the opponents’ fans turned raucous and those for the Bolts clapped nervously. She struck out the next batter for the second out. Her fans roared.

The next Peach, Charlotte Woodhull, pounded the first ball she saw over the head of Bolts left fielder Macie Hood for a run-scoring double.

The score was 10-9, with the tying and winning runs on base, as Colbi Hurst came to the plate for the Peaches. She lined Kane’s first pitch toward Bolts second baseman Lorelei Roberts.

The ball hit Roberts’ glove with a thump. Game over. The Bolts fans erupted in the stands, as their team ran to the mound to hug Kane — who joined the Bolts all the way from Ontario — and celebrate their organization’s first championship.

“It was nerve-racking sitting there and letting 10 year olds decide,” said Olszewski, the head coach and an Orlando attorney, who has two daughters on his team. “But I couldn’t be more proud of those girls.”

Olszewski added: “I think we have tremendous momentum to hopefully make a difference. This was an amazing experience for me as a dad, for my daughters. I would want this experience for any little girl out there that loves the game of baseball.”

Soon, the Bolts went to the complex pavilion to get their medals from the tournament organizers. They then took a group photo behind a championship banner and signed posters before gathering their belongings for the long ride home.

Mrozek’s daughter, Lilyana, and Brobst, teammates on the 16U team, waited nearby, playing with the Gatorade water bottles the organizers also handed out.

The next day, Lilyana, 15, practiced on the same fields in Elizabethtown with players whom she and her mother will join next month at the Pony Girls Baseball World Series in the Philippines.

Brooke Mrozek, meanwhile, intends to keep the promise she made — to get a tattoo memorializing the achievement — if a Bolts team won a championship. Another parent has offered two tattoo designs. Fittingly, the 10U players will vote to decide which one it will be.

Liana Handler, of Coral Springs, is a junior journalism major at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications in Gainesville.