February 6, 2024

By Melissa Verge

Canadian Baseball Network

Her impact on Canada every time she took the field was so profound, one Ashley Stephenson gracing the lineup card wasn’t enough.

A roster full of Stephenson’s — that’s what you hoped for, said former longtime Women’s National Team manager Andre Lachance. Her competitiveness, reliability, and passion x9. (Or 20.)

“She was the type of player that you wish you had 20 of them on your team,” said Lachance, who managed the Women’s National team for 15 years.

But there was only one Stephenson that took the field in red and white for Canada for 15 seasons, and one that is being inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame this year.

The 2024 inductee with a decorated playing career will be the second woman ever to be individually inducted into the Hall, joining the late Helen Callaghan, an outfielder from Vancouver who starred in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, who was inducted in 2021.

Although she will be the first member of the Women’s National Team to be inducted, she won’t be the last, Stephenson said.

“There’s going to be plenty of women after me,” she said. “I know I was the first one as part of our national team program, but I have other teammates who will be following year after year, because you know, I've had some amazing teammates.”

Stephenson’s talent for the game spans more than her playing career. The 41-year-old is now making an impact on the future of the Toronto Blue Jays, as a coach with their High-A Vancouver Canadians. She was behind the defensive success of the team last season that won the Northwest League Championship.

“She’s a huge reason we led our organization in defensive efficiency last year,” said Vancouver Canadians manager Brent Lavallee. “Someone who just has so much passion like that every day, just a terrific first year. And I know players and staff and even fans all felt the positive impact of Ashley.”

Despite her success in the sport today, Stephenson said at one point she didn’t know a career in baseball could be in her future. When she was growing up, there was nobody that looked like her in an on-field role in pro baseball. It’s hard to have something to aspire to when it doesn’t exist in that capacity yet.

She stayed involved with the game through the years simply because she loved the sport — and she was good at it. It started as a four-year-old playing t-ball, and it’s continued ever since. That love and talent has taken her to places she never dreamed possible.

She hopes that young girls can see her, and know that their goals, their dreams, are just as much a possibility.

“For young kids, I think especially young girls, I’ve always tried to be a positive role model and I just want them to be able to chase their dreams like I was lucky enough to chase mine,” she said.

In her first year as a coach for Vancouver, she wasn’t afraid to put her own twist on things when she felt like the players needed a bit of a change. She did some thinking, and came up with an idea to keep things interesting at practice for the players working their way up through the Jays farm system.

She took a series of games she morphed into baseball specific drills and ran them at practice. For one drill, she turned a circle of cones into a “ring of fire” at the Canadians ballpark, where players had to react quickly inside the ring and make the catches.

It was a risk, but it paid off. The players loved it, and it was implemented once a week into their practice routine.

Looking back at her year in Vancouver and her career, that’s a highlight, and what she thinks of as a breakthrough day.

It’s a career with many accomplishments. She helped lead the Women’s National Team to seven medals throughout her career, and represented Canada at the 2015 Pan Am games, which she said is also a career highlight. She was named the first female manager of the Women’s National Team in 2022.

As a player and a coach Stephenson always stood out, Lachance said.

She was always highly competitive, and naturally emerged as a leader on the team, he said. He didn’t have to name a captain at the time because she just fit into that role.

“There was no doubt in my mind that after her playing career that she would become not only a coach but a super good coach,” he said.

Stephenson will be returning to a coaching role with the Women’s National Team this year, along with her coaching role with the Vancouver Canadians. Coaching alongside her with the Women’s National Team is Kate Psota, who played with Stephenson from the program's inception in 2004 up until 2018 when they both retired.

Psota says it’s the enthusiasm and effort Stephenson puts into the sport every time she takes the field that sticks out to her.

“She’s so passionate about the game that it’s hard not to be excited to play for her,” Psota said.

Besides her long tenure with the Women’s National Team, Stephenson has also worked for more than a decade as an instructor at Toronto Blue Jays instructional clinics across the country.

She was always eager to pass on her knowledge to youth players at the camps she instructed at, said Blue Jays TJ Burton, program manager, amateur baseball, adding that she was likely their top instructor.

“Thirteen years ago, the Blue Jays would show up with a female instructor and I think that stood out to people in possibly a skeptical way,” Burton said. “But once you saw her in action, I mean it was very clear that not only did she deserve to be there, but she was probably our best instructor.”

Her name has become synonymous with the sport in Canada - particularly for women’s baseball, Burton said.

“When you think of female baseball, I think right now you think of Ashley, and I think five years ago you thought of Ashley, and I think five years from now you’ll think about Ashley,” he said.

The successful athlete, and now coach, could be remembered for many things, including personal accomplishments - the countless medals she’s helped the Women’s Team win over the years, her 2008 season that saw her win tournament all-star at third base, being the first woman to manage the Women’s National Team and second in history to coach for the Jays.

But for Stephenson, she hopes to be remembered for who she was as a teammate, and how she always left it all on the field.

“I dedicated a lot of my life to ball but I never felt like it was a sacrifice, I always loved it,” she said. “So if people remember me as a hardworking player and as a great teammate who always kind of put the team first, I’d be really happy with that.”