MLB announces new camps aimed at boosting girls’ youth baseball

For years, softball has been the primary option for young girls on the diamond. USA Baseball, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, is working to ensure fast pitch won’t be the only option much longer.

The two organizations have teamed up to provide young women the same opportunities as their male counterparts when it comes to stepping into the batter’s box in front of some of the country’s best coaches.

USA Baseball and MLB announced Monday they’d teamed to produce a pair of high-profile events aimed at boosting girls’ participation in youth baseball. The first will be the second annual Trailblazer Series, which invites standouts from across North America to compete in a four-day tournament. The second is the first-ever Girls Baseball Breakthrough Series (GBBS), a developmental camp aimed at identifying and grooming young talent.

“Women playing baseball is an important part of our sport’s history,” said MLB commissioner Robert Manfred said in a press release. “That legacy is also significant to the game’s present and future. We are proud to work alongside USA Baseball in creating events that raise the profile of girls and women baseball. We are committed to ensuring that any young woman who chooses to play baseball, particularly through our RBI programs and MLB Youth Academies, will have the opportunity to do so.”

The Trailblazer Series will feature players from 21 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Canada. These players will be placed onto random teams for four days of competition just outside Los Angeles in Compton, California. That tournament will run from April 12-April 15, encompassing Jackie Robinson weekend in the process.

Strong performers could return for the GBBS fewer than two months later. The event will take place at the Dodgers’ spring training facility in Vero Beach, Florida and will be the first in the Breakthrough Series’ history to specifically target young women interested in pursuing the sport as a viable collegiate and professional option.

While the two events will only run for a total of nine days, it’s a step forward for a sport that’s often drawn a handful of female players at the Little League level but significantly fewer as athletes have grown older. For many young women, softball is the only realistic avenue for turning their passion on the diamond into the kind of pursuit that can pave the way to a collegiate scholarship or beyond. There aren’t too many roads available for the girl who eats, sleeps, and dreams baseball just yet, but this joint venture from the MLB and USA Baseball will help ensure America’s most promising young talents have an opportunity to find a place where their skills will be nurtured — if only for a few days at a time.