The Beenleigh Hawks history making “ALL GIRL” baseball team.
This team is made up of all girls and are all currently age eligible players within the Beenleigh Baseball Club for the Under 14’s age division. The club also has one additional girl in this age group who is participating in the Under 14 Division 1 team.
The team is made up of four returning players from last season and five new to baseball – two of these new girls are born 1999 while all other memebers are born 2000 and thus will have another year in the Under 14’s age division next season.
This team has evolved as a result of hard recruitment and training. Two years ago the Little league side had some six girls within the one side. As with each year, a number of these players (particularly girls) did not return to the sport of baseball the following year. However, with a lot of recruitment prior to the commencement of last season, Beenleigh were able to achieve a full nine girl players in the Little League age group. The Junior Director of Coaching at the time did not feel the girls had the strength in the pitching and catching areas to field an “ALL GIRLS” side in this competition.
With an off season development program and the decision to enter a mixed team into the local Logan Softball competition, the development and the confidence of the children involved improved and they went on to the win the Grand Final of their age division in the softball competition.
From this the team has now evolved and it would appear they will be competitive in the Under 14’s Div 2 South competition.
This will give these players a greater exposure to more intense and greater strength competition and will then develop the strength and skills of girls baseball in Queensland in this Junior rank. With the introduction of the Under 15’s National titles and the Queensland Women’s team, female players in Queensland will have more opportunity to develop a career path within womens’ baseball.
