More and more Quebec girls are heading out to the baseball diamond

This year, more and more kids have been playing baseball in Quebec. Many Montreal baseball teams like NDG Baseball’s Bobcats say they’ve seen an increase in girls participating in the bat-and-ball sport.

“When I first started, I was kind of clueless. Honestly, I just knew there was a ball, a bat, and a glove,” said Jacqueline Sidel, a Bobcats baseball player.

Sidel, 12, has now played four seasons and leads the Bobcats – NDG Baseball’s first all-girls team.

“I felt terrible for some of my friends. They wanted to play and they were like, ‘oh, I don’t want to play with the boys because it’s really intimidating.’ But when the Bobcats were created, it was just much better,” she explained.

NDG Baseball’s director of girls’ baseball Johanna Miller said their new all-girls teams gave spots to 43 girls in 2023.

“The coaches, the volunteers who’ve put the time and effort into teaching these girls in a way that girls understand and feel comfortable learning a new sport judgement-free in a comfortable environment – that has shown success in their skills, and they have come a long way in just one season,” explained Miller.

Baseball Quebec says the creation of Quebec Women’s Baseball League in 2021 brought a significant increase of Quebec girls registering in baseball. Over 5,000 girls now listed, a leap from 3,000 which Eric Laferrière, vice-president of the Quebec Women’s Baseball League, said was not that long ago.

“It’s well deserved for all the girls because they have been deprived of that sport for over a hundred years. As you might know perhaps in the United States and in Canada, baseball had become prerogative for boys,” said Laferrière.

The league has allowed more and more girls to participate and enjoy the competitive sport.

“It’s really a team sport. Like it can’t be only you, like in soccer and basketball where it can only be you scoring. It’s a team sport where everyone needs to score,” said Juliet Wong, a 10-year-old Bobcats baseball player who plays alongside her twin sister, Matilda.

“It’s just a sport to have fun. Even though we lost most of our games, we were always cheering on the side every time because we had fun,” Matilda added.