Marti Sementelli’s Facebook bio says a lot about who she is in a limited number of words. “Never give up no matter what anybody says or thinks. I am the only girl on the Birmingham Baseball Team. I have been playing baseball since i was 3 years old.”
“I have been on the Women’s USATeam for the World Cup in Japan. I recently pitched my first no hitter in the Roy Hobbs tournament in Tuscon, Arizona.”
The high school senior pitches for Birmingham High in Lake Balboa, Calif., where she has struck out 14 hitters in 22 innings. In March, she pitched a complete game, throwing 102 pitches, in a 6-1 victory. If you look her up on YouTube, you can see why she is having so much success – she has a great curve ball and a good change-up.
Recently, she was offered a small athletic scholarship to play JV baseball for Montreat, a Christian college with Presbyterian roots in the Blue Ridge Mountains of N.C. If she performs well enough there, she could earn a spot on the varsity team. She has not signed a letter of intent to play for them, but just the possibility has created quite a media buzz around her.
“I think the media probably got hold of this before they should have,” said Michael Bender, Montreat’s coach, in a USA Today story. “I’m not trying to skirt away from this because I have given her this opportunity, and I knew that some of this would come with it. It’s hard because I didn’t really want to be known around Asheville for this; I kind of wanted to be known around Asheville for playing pretty good baseball.”
Bender says he has received unpleasant emails from alumni and some of his current players aren’t happy about it. He says he has also received positive feedback. One player, the team’s catcher Brent Rowe, says he thinks it’s a cool opportunity for Sementelli, the school and for baseball.
But it does raise questions about travel and sleeping arrangements as well as locker room access – especially since baseball stadiums only have two locker rooms, one for each team.
Managers and coaches must be figuring it out though. The USA Today story says Ashley Bratcher, director of the women’s national team for USA Baseball, estimates that 1,000 girls are playing high school baseball and most who play beyond that are on club teams in college.
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