Female baseball player feels at home with the boys

Acacia O’Connor Staff Writer

Millions of girls play competitive team softball in America today; very few play baseball. In fact, there are no collegiate women’s baseball teams.

Not long ago, however, it was less unusual for women to play baseball. In 1866 students formed the first-ever women’s baseball team—the Vassar Resolutes.

The Resolutes are now little more than a sepia-colored photograph in the Vassar Encyclopedia. But there is still one female athlete on campus swinging a bat, and that is Lilly Jacobson ’10.

While Vassar women in baseball history makes for an interesting backdrop to her story, for Jacobson it’s about being a ball player and loving the game.

“I started in little league, and there were a couple of girls then, but I didn’t want to switch to softball when we were 12, so I kept playing,” Jacobson said. But playing as a female hasn’t been easy for her.

Though Title IX—the amendment requiring that men’s and women’s athletic receive equal funding—is now 25 years old, men’s and women’s sports are still largely segregated realms. A woman playing baseball, like a man playing field hockey or a woman playing football, is still an anomaly.

Freshman year of high school in Reno, Nev., Jacobson was cut from the junior varsity team by a coach who told her she wasn’t good enough to play for him. Jacobson transferred to Earl Wooster High School, where she pitched about 15 innings and had a 3.60 Earned Run Average.

Her teammates had mixed feelings about her playing on the team. “It took awhile for the guys to warm up to me,” she recalled. “It took me showing them that I was just any other ball player and prove that I could play with them.” But for Jacobson, the extra work was worth it.

“It’s been kind of a battle, but I just never wanted to switch to softball,” she said.

Jacobson came to Vassar to play golf, but returned to baseball this year. The Vassar baseball team was more open-minded about playing with a girl than her high school teammates were, Jacobson said.

“The guys on the team have been really supportive. Like immediately when I came out in the fall they accepted and welcomed me,” she said. This contrasted with teams she played with in high school in Nevada.

While there are no known NCAA women’s baseball teams, several countries boast national teams, including the United States. When Jacobson was selected to play on the USA Women’s National Team in 2006, it was the first time she had played on a team comprised solely of women.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Jacobson said of the team. “I wasn’t sure if they’d be softball players who decided to play baseball or what, but they weren’t; they were just baseball players. It was really good baseball.”

The Women’s National team, for which Jacobson pitched and played third base, won its second consecutive gold medal at the 2006 Women’s World Cup in Taipei, Taiwan.

“It was fun to see the different countries’ style of baseball,” she said.
Jacobson plans to try out for the national team again this summer. In August, the team will travel to the 2008 Women’s World Cup location in August in Matsuyama, Japan.