Talented 8-year-old was told girls shouldn’t play baseball, then she went viral with amazing highlight reel

Talented 8-year-old was told girls shouldn’t play baseball, then she went viral with amazing highlight reel

8-year-old girl told she shouldn’t play baseball goes viral with highlight reel
8-year-old girl told she shouldn’t play baseball goes viral with highlight reel. Source: Today/Jason Liebgrets

Always let your actions do the talking.

People that don’t want you to be good at something will say and do things to hold you back.

Misery loves company and sometimes it’s people we admire or “friends” of ours that tell us these things, but we mustn’t listen. Why? Because the people that say it can’t be done are the exact same people that listened when someone else told them the same thing.

8-year-old girl told she shouldn’t play baseball goes viral with highlight reel. Source: Today/Jason Liebgrets
8-year-old girl told she shouldn’t play baseball goes viral with highlight reel. Source: Today/Jason Liebgrets

An 8-year-old Canadian girl didn’t have to say anything when she wanted to prove her point after being told that girls shouldn’t play baseball. So Ashlynn Jolicoeur decided to show her highlight reel to the world instead.

A video of Ashlynn making diving catches during drills has become a hit with baseball fans, having been viewed more than 4 million times on Twitter.

The video — shot by her mother at Civic Fieldhouse in Oshawa, Canada, earlier this year, per DurhamRegion.com — was posted on the Facebook account for Baseball for All, an organization dedicated to empowering girls to play baseball and addressing gender inequality.

“Girls can do anything,” Ashlynn told CBC Radio on Wednesday.

Ashlynn was awarded the most valuable player award for her performance in a tournament in Canada last year, but it was followed by criticism from a fellow team parent, Baseball for All wrote on Instagram.

Dan Therien, Ashlynn Jolicoeur's dad, says 'it was upsetting' when another parent told him that girls shouldn’t be playing baseball and that they should stick to softball.
Dan Therien, Ashlynn Jolicoeur’s dad, says ‘it was upsetting’ when another parent told him that girls shouldn’t be playing baseball and that they should stick to softball. Credit and Source: Salma Ibrahim/CBC

“After the game, (a parent on our team) told me that girls shouldn’t be playing baseball and that they should stick to softball,” her father, Dan Therien, told Baseball for All. “Then, at tryouts, the coach cut her from the team.”

That slight only motivated Ashlynn to pursue the sport she loves even harder.

“It was upsetting,” her father told CBC Radio. “I was upset, but I did not let that bother me too much because I think some people sometimes are a little outdated in their thoughts.”

A second baseman whose favorite all-time players include Roberto Alomar, Kevin Pillar and Freddy Galvis, she has since been invited to BFA’s National Girls Baseball Tournament from July 31 through Aug. 4 in Rockford, Illinois.

Baseball runs in the family, as two of her older brothers play for the Ontario Blue Jays amateur baseball program, according to DurhamRegion.com.

Ashlynn loves nothing more than proving wrong the people who underestimate her.

She got a thrill last year when she traveled with her family to the Women’s Baseball World Cup in Florida and got to meet members of Team Canada, her father told DurhamRegion.com. She also met former members of the Rockford Peaches, who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in the 1940s and ’50s and inspired the hit movie “A League of Their Own.”

Ashlynn also got to hang out on Wednesday with her favorite team, the Toronto Blue Jays, where she met rookie sensation Vladimir Guerrero Jr. before the game.

It was just two young phenoms talking some baseball.

“I don’t think it has ever occurred to Ashlynn that some people think that girls can’t do things that boys can do,” her father told BFA.

Source CBC


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