November 4, 2019

By J.P. Antonacci

Canadian Baseball Network

Day after day, morning and night, Ashlynn Jolicoeur plays baseball.

Before hitting the books, nine-year-old Ashlynn starts her day by heading to her backyard to hit off a tee or practice her swing, attaching a cloth tail to the bat to increase air resistance and build muscle.

“And I do a workout – sit-ups and push-ups, things like that,” Ashlynn said.

After school she gets right back at it, enlisting her five siblings to play catch or throw her grounders so she can work on quickly transferring the ball to her throwing hand.

“It’s just amazing,” said Ashlynn’s father, Dan Therien. “As soon as I get home from work, she wants me to take her to the diamond.”

Many evenings find father and daughter under the ballpark lights, baseballs pinging off Ashlynn’s aluminum bat and flying into the night sky.

Ashlynn’s motivation to put in the work every day is underpinned by her clear enthusiasm for the game.

“I don’t remember when I started playing, but my mom and dad said I started from when I could walk,” she said. “I love baseball and I want to get better.”

Ashlynn has indeed gotten better. In fact, she was chosen by the opposing team as the most valuable player on her Whitby Chiefs AAA Rookie Ball rep team during the 2018 semifinals.

Then the grumbles started. Therien says a fellow Whitby parent told him that his daughter – the only girl on the team – should be playing softball instead of baseball. Ashlynn was cut from the team the following spring, and didn’t crack the AA roster either despite being “head and shoulders above everyone else,” said Therien, who coaches with the Ontario Blue Jays.

“I know how to assess skill, and she was definitely a triple-A player last year,” he said.

Instead, Ashlynn played second base with the Chiefs’ A team, coached by Andrew Haines. She helped the Chiefs win the Eastern Ontario Baseball Association A championship.

This year, Ashlynn is back on the AAA Mosquito team, now coached by Haines. The two coaches who cut her last year are no longer with the organization, says Therien.

“I’m just glad we’re on the team again,” Therien said. “It’d be strange for her not to play baseball. It’s such a big part of her life.”

The story would likely end there if not for a viral video (above) that brought Ashlynn’s example of perseverance in the face of adversity to an international audience.

“I love everything about baseball, but my favourite thing is defense and diving for the ball,” said Ashlynn, which might explain why she wanted an outfield drill during a Chiefs practice inside the Oshawa Civic Centre facility recorded for posterity on her mother Kerri’s cell phone.

“I was just practising and I told my mom to record,” said Ashlynn, who ended up making several diving catches in a row as the camera rolled.

The family sent the video to Baseball For All, a non-profit organization that promotes equal access to baseball for girls in North America. Since the video was posted in late July, Ashlynn’s diving plays have been viewed upwards of 18 million times on social media.

“We didn’t know they were going to post it, and then it went viral,” Ashlynn said.

ESPN ran a clip of the video on the SportsCenter Top 10 plays of the day, while the anchors told viewers of Ashlynn’s determination to keep playing despite opposition from some in her community. She was then invited to tell her story on various national media outlets and was featured on Major League Baseball’s website as an example of a young ballplayer driven by her love of the game.

“It was really cool,” Ashlynn said. “I hope this makes more girls play what they want to do.”

In September, ESPN came to the Iroquois Park Sports Centre Batting Cage in Whitby to meet Ashlynn and film a segment for SportsCenter Top 10 Day, a national broadcast that aired on Oct. 10 highlighting 10 inspirational amateur athletes and “celebrating the people and places behind the plays” featured on the network, according to Kristie Adler, ESPN Director of Communication.

The network arranged to have one of the batting cages at Iroquois Park wrapped in SportsCenter’s colours with a message declaring Whitby as “Home of SC Top Ten Ashlynn Jolicoeur.” The cage also features a quote from Ashlynn: “I just want to play baseball.”

“It was really cool. I did not think that they were going to do that,” Ashlynn said. “I didn’t know that I was the only Canadian in the SportsCenter Top 10.”

Ashlynn’s family, friends, teammates and neighbours packed the park, along with Whitby mayor Don Mitchell and Team Canada player and Canadian Girls Baseball elite coach Emma Carr. Ashlynn struck up a friendship with Carr and recently served as bat girl for Carr’s Ryerson University fast pitch team.

“The reaction in every home town we visited has been overwhelming,” said Laura Gentile, ESPN’s senior VP of marketing. “To celebrate these athletes and their accomplishments, and to bring the ESPN spirit to their communities, has been gratifying beyond measure. It illustrates the power and beauty of sports.”

The visit from SportsCenter capped an unforgettable summer for Ashlynn, who attended the Women's Baseball World Cup in Viera, Fla., and was invited to take part in Baseball For All’s fifth annual national tournament in Rockford, Ill., the largest all-girls tournament in North America.

“It was really exciting. All my teammates were really nice. And I got a home run there!” said Ashlynn, who suited up with 350 players from around the continent.

Another fond memory for Ashlynn was meeting Baseball For All founder Justine Siegal, the first female coach in Major League Baseball.

“She can play,” Siegal told CBC News. “She works really hard and you can see the passion and love for the game.”

Therien said the whole family is proud of what Ashlynn has accomplished on and off the field.

“We heard from lots of people saying how inspirational her story is, and how her drive and passion motivated their daughters to pursue something they wanted to do,” he said.

Therien mentioned the story of a local girl in Whitby named Raya who last year played select Rookie Ball and this year made the AAA Jr. Rookie rep team. Raya’s mother told Therien that her daughter pointed to the video of Ashlynn playing baseball as proof that Raya herself didn’t have to switch to softball in order to keep playing.

“She said (Raya) wouldn’t have tried out for rep if she hadn’t seen Ashlynn’s story,” Therien said. “It's amazing to hear how Ashlynn is inspiring others to do what they love and to work hard at it.”

He is heartened by the success of Baseball For All and the Canadian Girls Baseball League, and hopes girls like Ashlynn will have more opportunities in the sport as they get older.

“It’s nice to see that it’s starting to grow,” he said. “When it’s time for her to go to (post-secondary) school, it’d be nice for her to get a scholarship. I think in this day and age, everybody should have the opportunity to pursue what they want to do.”

“I really like that girls are starting to play baseball now. My dad said it’s a big difference from when he was younger to now,” Ashlynn added.

A viral video made her famous, but it’s the hours of practice Ashlynn puts in far from the spotlight that she hopes will one day make her a star.

“I think she’s handled it great, and it hasn’t changed her at all,” Therien said. “She works every day.”

She primarily played second base last season, but this year as a Mosquito player Ashlynn is seeing time all around the diamond, including her first crack at pitching.

“It’s really fun,” she said. “What I like about pitching is you have control of the game.”

Already a switch hitter, Ashlynn is now working on pitching using both arms.

“I think it’d be cool to hit from both sides and pitch from both sides,” she said.

This winter, when not playing hockey or snowboarding, she’ll keep her baseball skills sharp by hitting Wiffle balls off a tee into a net in her basement.

“It’s a nice way to spend time with her,” said Dan of their nightly practices. “I like supporting all my kids and what they love doing.”

One more highlight of Ashlynn’s whirlwind summer was being welcomed to the Rogers Centre by the Toronto Blue Jays and meeting two of her favourite players, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette.

“It was so cool!” Ashlynn said. “When everybody moved out of the way and I saw (Bichette), it was the most exciting part. I gave him one of the Sports Centre bats and I put my name on it, and I wrote ‘you’re my favourite player.’”

Ashlynn is already an inspiration to many, but she’s not stopping there. There’s one more barrier she wants to break through.

“I want to play for Team Canada,” she says. “And after that, I want to play on the Blue Jays.”