Olivia Pichardo, a Brown University freshman, made history Monday by becoming the first female player to make an NCAA Division I baseball varsity roster.
What You Need To Know
- Olivia Pichardo, a Brown University freshman, made history Monday by becoming the first female player to make an NCAA Division I baseball varsity roster
- Bears coach Grant Achilles announced that the 18-year-old from Queens, New York, made the team as a utility player after she tried out as a walk-on
- Achilles, Brown’s coach since 2014, said Pichardo “put together the most complete walk-on tryout I have seen from a player since becoming a head coach”
- According to Baseball for All, a nonprofit group that works to increase opportunities for girls and women in baseball, 18 women have played on college baseball teams to date, but none have played on the Division I level
Bears coach Grant Achilles announced that the 18-year-old from Queens, New York, made the team as a utility player after she tried out as a walk-on.
“It was definitely a surreal moment for me because it’s something that I’ve wanted since eighth grade,” Pichardo said in a news release. “It’s kind of crazy to know that I’m living out my dream right now and my ideal college experience that I’ve always wanted, so that’s really cool.”
Achilles, Brown’s coach since 2014, said Pichardo “put together the most complete walk-on tryout I have seen from a player since becoming a head coach.”
Pichardo started play baseball at age 5 in the Forest Hills Little League and later at Garden School in Queens, almost always as the lone girl on her teams. This past summer, she was a pitcher and outfielder on the USA Baseball Women’s National Team.
Along the way, she always played for travel club teams and participated in Major League Baseball youth program.
Pichardo said she first set her sights on a possible college playing career four or five years ago.
“I don’t think that we thought that it would go this far, but starting eighth grade or freshman year of high school, we thought, well, maybe I can actually play at the collegiate level,” she said in a video produced by Brown. “It was something that I just started thinking about, and it didn’t seem like something tangible until I started to get further into the recruitment process.”
Said Achilles: “It was evident from the beginning she had a plan, just from her stretching routine or warmups. She’s played with Team USA, so she’s been on an elite level in the past, and that showed.”
The road to making Brown’s team not only included tryouts in September, but also a weekslong assessment process that included practices and workouts with current players.
According to Baseball for All, a nonprofit group that works to increase opportunities for girls and women in baseball, 18 women have played on college baseball teams to date, but none have played on the Division I level.
“I think that it’s really cool to see that we’re having more and more female baseball players at the collegiate level, no matter what division it is,” said Pichardo, who also has interned in the New York Mets’ amateur scouting department. “It’s just really good to see this progression. And I think that it’s really paving the way for other girls in the next generation to also have these goals that they want to achieve and dream big and know that they can do it.”
Brown opens its season Feb. 24-26 with a four game series at Georgia State.
