America’s pastime is garnering more young females toward baseball. “It’s my first love.” – The Denver Post

“Why is she out on the field?”

A mother standing in the bleachers during a Little League baseball game was yelling toward the field. She was motioning toward 9-year-old Bri Grice, who stood on the mound as the opposing starting pitcher. The lady yelled again.

“Why is she out there?”

Grice, who was the only female on the boys Little League team, looked toward the women in the bleachers and then focused her eyes back on the next hitter.

“ ….. And then I struck her son out, so I felt really good about that,” Grice said with a laugh.

The now 16-year-old started out with gymnastics and cheerleading at an early age, but neither kept her interested. She then turned to baseball — her first competitive sport. Once she started baseball at age 8, there was no stopping her.

As she played her way up the Little League levels and eventually to Northfield High School in Denver, Grice saw more girls drop baseball and enroll in softball. To her, that didn’t matter. All she wanted was to be on the baseball field, no matter if there were boys or girls beside her.

“When she got to high school, I was kind of sold into thinking that she couldn’t do it,” said her mother, Trisha Grice. “I pretty much encouraged her to try softball, and she did but kept saying she wanted to do baseball. It’s her first love. Then afterward, I felt bad that I had done that.”

This is a situation that happens for many young players such as Grice, who is one of the rare female players on a high school baseball roster. That’s where Major League Baseball steps in.

Grice was one of roughly 20 girls who gathered at the Metropolitan State University of Denver on Friday to participate in the annual MLB Grit: Girls ID Tour, a development initiative by MLB designed specifically for females 18 and under. The 1-day workout series aims to identify talent for various girls’ baseball events hosted by MLB and USA Baseball.

The top performers from each of the tour cities will be invited to more events in Fall 2021, including the Girls Baseball Breakthrough Series. All of these year-round events surround a larger effort dispelling the notion girls can only play softball and inform them that there’s a space for girls in baseball.

“Since these MLB and USA Baseball events have started, you see the amount of growth and more of these women who are playing the sport,” said Meggie Meidlinger, a pitcher for the USA Baseball Women’s National Team. “Giving these young girls an opportunity to play is key and the more we can build off of that, the more it’s only going to keep growing.”

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