{"id":9326,"date":"2019-10-15T13:03:24","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T17:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/?p=9326"},"modified":"2019-10-15T13:06:44","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T17:06:44","slug":"ajc-redshirt-ghc-baseball-player-inspires-female-baseball-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/2019\/10\/15\/ajc-redshirt-ghc-baseball-player-inspires-female-baseball-players\/","title":{"rendered":"AJC: Redshirt GHC baseball player inspires other female baseball players"},"content":{"rendered":"

As seen in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution<\/a>: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

More young female players unwilling to give up beloved sport for softball<\/h2>\n
By Helena Oliviero<\/h6>\n
\n

Ashton Lansdell, 18, steps to the plate at a baseball field in Emerson, Georgia, on a warm fall afternoon. She\u2019s already walked and stolen a base.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Her teammates shout their support from the dugout to pump her up.<\/em><\/p>\n

He\u2019s scared of you, Ashton.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Here it comes. Don\u2019t miss it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Goodbye, ball!<\/em><\/p>\n

Facing pitches nearing 90 miles per hour, Ashton shows patience. She draws another walk and advances to first base.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

At first glance, this Georgia Highlands College baseball intrasquad scrimmage is not particularly significant. There are no fans in the bleachers. And the coach ends the game in the seventh inning because a pitcher feels tenderness in his throwing arm.<\/p>\n

And yet, Ashton, who started playing baseball at age 4 and has been a solid player at every youth level, sometimes a star, is making history once again on this picture-perfect baseball field about 10 miles northwest of Kennesaw. The young Marietta woman is the first female player on the Georgia Highlands baseball team, an NJCAA Division I program. Ashton is also believed to be the first girl to start a varsity game as a pitcher at Wheeler High School, known for perennially strong sports programs. And last year, at only 17, she landed a spot on the roster for the USA Baseball Women\u2019s National Team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always loved the game of baseball,\u201d said Ashton. \u201cEverything is faster and more competitive in the next levels, and no matter how fast or how hard it is, it doesn\u2019t change my mind of whether I want to play or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ashton is part of a tiny but growing group of girls in Georgia and across the country determined to play baseball and search for ways to keep playing when they reach their teen years \u2014 and beyond. And while the number of girls playing baseball remains small, they are determined to break the gender barrier, even as they age, and it becomes increasingly challenging to keep playing.<\/p>\n

While you see the occasional girl playing Little League, nearly all of them who want to continue playing ball get channeled into softball, in part because that\u2019s where scholarships are.<\/p>\n

Girls and boys play tennis, soccer and basketball. They both run marathons. But when it comes to baseball, the conventional wisdom has been boys play baseball, girls play softball.<\/p>\n

But softball is a distinct sport with different pitching \u2014 often underhanded with a windmill-style motion, different balls (softballs are larger), different sized fields, different equipment, even different rules of the game.<\/p>\n

Biology plays a role. Boys, especially older boys, often have an edge over girls in size and strength, allowing them to throw faster and swing harder. But girls will say the toughest obstacles are against stereotypes \u2014 that baseball is only for boy.<\/p>\n

[...]<\/b><\/p>\n

A deep love of the game<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ashton started playing baseball when she was 4, tossing plastic balls, swinging a tiny wood bat in her family\u2019s yard. From the start, she was making easy contact with the ball. Her parents could tell their older child, and only daughter, had exceptionally good hand-eye coordination. And she was fast, too.<\/p>\n

She hit a home run at her first at bat at her very first T-ball game. By the time she was 10, she was on a competitive traveling team.<\/p>\n

Ashton said she rarely heard snide comments about her playing baseball \u2014 and when she did, they came from players on other teams, not from her teammates.<\/p>\n

At least one softball coach tried to recruit Ashton to play softball. And when she was 12, she acquiesced \u2014 to one practice. She didn\u2019t like the smaller field, larger ball, underhanded pitch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried it but wasn\u2019t feeling it,\u201d said Ashton. \u201cIt\u2019s just so different than baseball. It\u2019s like comparing pingpong to tennis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
Dash O\u2019Neill, the head coach for the Georgia Highlands baseball team, recalled the moment he attended one of Ashton\u2019s games earlier this year to evaluate her.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cShe reached out to me like other players and asked for an opportunity,\u201d said O\u2019Neill, who also coached at Chattahoochee Valley Community College for several years. O\u2019Neill has helped over 190 players advance to four-year institutions, as well as helped produce 16 players drafted by MLB teams.<\/p>\n

He was impressed. She threw the ball well. She was fast. A good defender.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s very tough mentally,\u201d he added. She wasn\u2019t a token girl on the field. She looked like she belonged.<\/p>\n

\n
[...]<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\u201cTo me, the part that she is a woman was not part of the equation. I saw a baseball player who wanted to play,\u201d Georgia Highlands College baseball coach Dash O\u2019Neill says of redshirt freshman Ashton Lansdell.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

While he recognizes Ashton\u2019s trying to accomplish at a high level, something very few women have achieved, he emphasized the following point repeatedly: \u201cTo me, the part that she is a woman was not part of the equation. I saw a baseball player who wanted to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill encouraged Ashton, currently playing second base, to sit out this season as a redshirt to adapt to the increased speed of the game. Ashton agreed, saying she will use the year to develop. Redshirting college athletes is a way for coaches to give players more time to develop before getting on the field or court without having to lose any of their eligibility.<\/p>\n

TO READ THE FULL STORY, PLEASE VISIT AJC.\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As seen in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: More young female players unwilling to give up beloved sport for softball By Helena Oliviero Ashton Lansdell, 18, steps to the plate at a baseball field in Emerson, Georgia, on a warm fall afternoon. She\u2019s already walked and stolen a base. Her teammates shout their support from the dugout […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":9328,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9326"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9330,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9326\/revisions\/9330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highlands.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}