South Bend Blue Sox Women's Baseball, Inc. is an Indiana, 501(c)3, not-for profit organization whose purposes are but not limited to:
1) Serving as an advocate for girls and women who are denied an opportunity to play baseball
2) Providing and promoting opportunities on the playing field in baseball for girls and women
3) Offering instructional baseball playing skill clinics for girls and women
4) Educating and dissemminating information to the public on the long history and tradition of girls and women in baseball
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2008 Can-Am Spirit of Sportsmanship
Tournament Information
With the 2008 Can-Am Tournament only a couple of months away, here are some of the things you will need to know for planning for this event.
As with the 2007 Can-Am, the plan is to have two divisions of play. For each division, there is a four-game guarantee.
Entry fee for the 2008 Can-Am is $600 per team. A non-refundable deposit of $250 USD is due by May 15, 2008. The balance of $350 is due by June 15, 2008. A check or money order can be made payable to: South Bend Blue Sox Women's Baseball, Inc. and sent to 7982 East Potato Hole Court, New Carlisle, IN 46552. The Blue Sox are a 501(c)3, Indiana-based not-for profit organization.
Housing for teams this year will be in a college dorm on the campus of Saint Mary's College. Rates for this are: $45/night for two players to a room. Single rooms are also available at a cost of $40/night. It is preferable that we get one check or money order per team, rather than lots of individual checks for rooms :)!
The College has also offered teams the opportunity to secure a meal card for each day at the cost of $20/day. That would allow them to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in the dining hall. Teams are not require to do this, however, any teams/players who are planning to do this, a head count is needed by June 15, 2008. They will need to know fairly strong figures of how many breakfasts, lunches, dinners to plan for.
On rental cars/vans.....still in the works.....I will update this soon.
If your team has an interest in playing in the 2008 Can-Am, please let me know as I will do a posting of interested teams and well as those who are confirmed. Also, individuals players seeking a team to play on, please email me and we will make sure that you get placed on a team for this tourney.
More coming soon.....questions??, Please email me (John Kovach) at Knucksie1@aol.com.
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| Robin Wallace, Nashua Pride Pioneers (at far right) leads a group of young girls through some of the finer points of pitching basics! |
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| 2007 Season Wrap-up
The 2007 baseball season will prove to be one , if not the most successful for both women and girls.
In February, the Girls-n-Sports Day again drew clinicians from the girls and women's baseball world to Orlando, FL where they gave a baseball experience of pitching, hitting and fielding to some 600+ girl scouts.
April saw the return of the WBL Women's Baseball Leadership Conference. The 2007 conference was held at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, IN. Featured speakers included: Justine Siegal of the WBL, Terri Lakowski from the Women's Sports Foundation, former major league pitching coach Bob Cluck and three younger players, Anna Cella and Lindsay Horwitz of Chicago and Irina Kovach of New Carlisle, IN.
Numerous tournaments for women, including a first-time venue in Detroit in June with teams from the US and Canada to the always popular Roy Hobbs tourney in Ft. Myers, Fl.
Opportunities for the younger players also continued to blossom with a girls tourneys in Detroit and Ft. Myers; a girls baseball camp in Toronto as well as participation of an all-girls team in New York and Delaware co-ordinated by the WBL.
In Chicago, the Pioneers, an all-girls team became possibly the first such team to pay in what was considered a "boys baseball league". The Pioneers also participated in tournaments and hosted a pair of all-girl baseball games at historic Thillens Stadium in Chicago!
The Pawtucket Slaterettes program made the leap into national play in 2007 competing in both the Detroit and Ft. Myers girls' tourneys.
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During 2007, South Bend Blue Sox Women's Baseball, Inc. was able to assist a number of young women to follow their dreams of playing baseball. Players and parents contacted the organization for help and they were directed to a resource person in their community and to a national resource, the Women's Sports Foundation Advocacy Department.
If you know of a female player who has been told she cannot participate in a youth/high school or adult baseball program, please contact: John Kovach at knucksie1@aol.com
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| Irina Kovach, WBL Sparks 2006 |
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BATTLING TO PLAY BASEBALL
Pictured on the left is Irina Kovach or New Carlisle, Indiana. In January of 2007, the Rolling Prairie Baseball Association (RPBA) (Rolling Prairie, IN) told Irina that she could not play baseball in their program because she was a female and they did not allow girls in that offering. The RPBA is a member of the Kankakee Valley Association (KVA) in northern Indiana.
Irina has played baseball for six seasons in Little League, 12U travel teams (including the Women's Baseball League WBL Sparks, an all girls team) and in the summer of 2006, she represented the United States at the World Children's Baseball Fair in Japan.
Research has shown that the the RPBA/KVA may be the only baseball organizations in the state of Indiana that excludes females from playing baseball in their programs.
Complaints have been filed with both the Indiana ACLU and the Indiana Civil Rights Commission (ICRC).
This is the type of cases that shows up far too many times. In most instances, it only takes a simple call to explain to an organization why a female is allowed to participate in a baseball program. For others, it's a far more time consuming task, but one that needs to be tackled to insure that players, especially those who play in rec programs like the RPBA/KVA are not discriminated based on their gender.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS STORY, VISIT www.womenssportsfoundation.org AND TYPE IRINA KOVACH INTO THE PAGE SEARCH.
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"Where's The Ponytail?"
Below is a powerpoint presentation created for the April, 2007 Popular and American Culture Conference in Boston, MA.
The presentation focused on the question of why images of young girls are used in baseball-related materials for popular culture consumption. The premise seems to contradict the actual on the field baseball opportunities that are open to female players.
Most noteworthy is this presentation is the Little League Baseball and Softball logos which clearly depict the gender of its participants, with the baseball image that of a male and the softball image a female. This depiction runs counter to the actual program offerings of Little League, since girls can play baseball and, Little League offers a separate softball program for both boys and girls.
Click on any of the images below to enlarge.
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| Maggie Riley, New York Bloomer Girls, 1931 |
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Linedrive and Lipstick Exhibit Debuts in April of 2008!
For the first time ever, an exhibit about the history of girls and women in baseball from 1866 to present day will make its debut at the Legends of the Game Museum in Arlington, Texas on April 6, 2008.
The exhibit curated by John Kovach with commentary by Barbara Gregorich is being produced by Exhibits USA of Kansas City Mo.
Other venues on the schedule include: Fort Morgan Museum, Fort Morgan, CO; Kansas City Sports Hall of Fame, Wichita, KS; Cherokee Strip Land Rush Museum, Arkansas City, KS; Museum of Seminole County History, Sanfor, FL; The Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ; Louisville Slugger Museum, Louisville, KY and the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center.
If you have a museum in your community that might be interested in hosting this exhibition, please email Rachel Saalweachter from Exhibits USA at: ramona@maaa.org
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Organizations
Women's Baseball League..........www.baseballglory.com
American Women's Baseball Federation...........www.womenplayingbaseball
Chicago Pioneers Girls Baseball.............www.chicagopioneers.com
Pawtucket Slaterettes Girls and Women's Baseball..........www.slaterettes.com
Girls Play Baseball.............http://www.girlsplaybaseball.com or www.girlsplaybaseball.org
United States Girls Baseball Association............www.usgba.net
USA Baseball, Inc...............http://mlb.mlb.com/usa_baseball/index.jsp
Women's Sports Foundation...............www.womenssportsfoundation.org
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