By Adam Morissette

Baseball Canada

OTTAWA - She’s played in all seven World Baseball Softball Confederation Women’s Baseball World Cups, won a Pan Am Games silver medal and now Mississauga, Ont., native Ashley Stephenson is among four finalists for the inaugural Dorothy Seymour Mills Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by the Society For American Baseball Research’s (SABR) Women in Baseball Committee.

Stephenson, a member of the very first Baseball Canada Women’s National Team from 2004, joins professional baseball umpire Perry Barber, the late Edith Houghton a former scout with the Philadelphia Phillies and women’s baseball coach Justine Siegal as finalists for the award.

“I’m extremely honoured to be nominated for this award and be named alongside all of these amazing women,” said Stephenson. “Baseball has been such a huge part of my life so to receive recognition like this is truly special.”

Eligible candidates include any person with a sustained involvement in women’s baseball or any woman with a longtime involvement in baseball in any fashion — player, umpire, writer, executive, team owner, scout, etc.

Stephenson’s baseball resume certainly fits the criteria by virtue of her unparalleled international baseball accomplishments including two silver and three bronze medals at the WBSC Women’s Baseball World Cup and a Pan Am Games silver medal. She’s been named Women’s National Team Most Valuable Player on two occasions (2005, 2008) and was a recipient of the Jimmy Rattlesnake Award, honouring a member of the women’s national team for their on-field accomplishments, as well as their leadership and team spirit, in 2011 and 2016.

She’s is equally involved in promoting female baseball to young girls across Canada through her work with the Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Academy. An accomplished athlete, Stephenson is a former National Champion hockey player at Wilfred Laurier University and is currently a Phys Ed teacher and coach at Frank Hayden Secondary School in Burlington, Ont.

To learn more about the Dorothy Seymour Mills Lifetime Achievement Award, and the other finalists, please click here.