Tam Coaches Applaud Girl's Baseball Dreams

Something a bit unusual happened when baseball coach went to watch a recent Junior Division Little League game.

He saw a girl playing for the Twin Cities team from Larkspur-Corte Madera.

But that wasn’t the unusual part.

“She probably had the best swing on the team,” Terry noted.

That’s right. Larkspur’s Sarah Ihnken, the Twin Cities All-Star second baseman and leadoff hitter, is no ordinary girl. In one All-Star game this month, she got on base four times against some of the top 13- and 14-year-old boys from San Francisco in a sport girls aren’t supposed to be playing.

So why is she playing baseball?

“For one thing, she's capable,” noted Steve Stewart, the Twin Cities manager. “Some girls are great softball players, but they can't hang with the guys. Not her. She’s one of our best players.

“She very fast and she’s a great hitter. She got hit by pitches more than anyone this season and it didn’t faze her. She’d just steal second and third. She could run track if she weren’t playing baseball.”

In fact, Ihnken, a recent eighth-grade graduate at St. Mark’s School in San Rafael, does do track. She holds the school long jump record, soaring 15 feet, 4 inches.

And she also has done quite well in volleyball and basketball in the St. Patrick CYO program.

She just doesn’t play softball.

“She won’t play softball,” explained her mom, Vicki Figone. “I’ve tried to discuss it with her. I think she could get a nice softball scholarship. But she has no desire to play softball. She’s just not into it.”

And that’s not about to change, Ihnken promised. She’s planning to try out for the baseball team at Marin Catholic next season.

Her goal: More than just making the freshman team.

“I feel like as a girl, I wouldn’t want to try out and sit on the bench,” she explained. “I would want to be one of the starters on the team.”

That attitude helped her develop into one of the top Junior Division players in the Twin Cities program. Heck, in all of District 3.

“I feel there is pressure because I want to be one of the better players,” she said. “It’s hard to explain. I feel I have to be one of the better players because I am a girl.”

Ihnken, who stands 5-foot-5, plans to play volleyball at Marin Catholic in the fall and perhaps basketball in the winter. But definitely not softball in the spring.

“I love baseball so much, I don’t think I could replace it. I would try to stick around baseball,” she pondered when asked what she’d do if she didn’t make the Marin Catholic team. “If I didn’t play baseball, I’d probably move to track over softball.”

Tam’s Terry wishes her the best and knows she can do it. After all, Terry’s first varsity team at Tam in 2009 included a girl, Allely Albert.

“She only played a limited amount of innings,” Terry recalled. “The problems with her were: her arm strength and she couldn’t really get the bat speed.

“I’m looking at the girl from Twin Cities and I see similar things. She has nice mechanics, but she’s not a big girl. I just think, moving into high school, she’ll probably have problems from a strength standpoint. It’s a tough thing to do.”

Figone worries her daughter is risking a college softball scholarship by sticking with baseball, but Tam softball coach says it’s too early to be concerned about that.

“If she’s going for a scholarship in softball and she makes the switch her junior year or her senior year, they’ll still see her,” he said of college talent evaluators.

“It’s going to take her some time to adjust to the (softball) pitching, but I’ve taken girls who played baseball and taught them how to hit a softball. Nine times out of 10, they’re a better player in softball.”

For now, Ihnken isn’t talking softball or scholarship. Her first love is baseball, a sport she has played since age 6.

“I’ve always been a tomboy,” she admitted. “I like being around guys.

“I’m a little tough, so I like the competition. Softball just seems not as competitive and not as fun for me because, I don’t know, softball just seems kinda … it’s hard to explain … I’m not trying to put down softball. Baseball is just more interesting. It’s just more of a tough game.”

You want tough? Ihnken has been hit by a pitch three times in a game this season on two different occasions. Without ever charging the mound, mind you.

“It has been a very positive experience,” she said. “As I get older, it gets much easier. Boys get more mature and they are friendlier to me. They include me more.”

Tyler Peck became her teammate this season for the first time on the A’s of the Twin Cities league. It didn’t take him long to develop a favorable impression.

“At the beginning of the year, I didn’t know what to expect,” the fellow All-Star admitted. “But I’ve been really impressed. She’s a great teammate.”

Ihnken hopes to get the opportunity to win over the boys at Marin Catholic as well.

And someday the girls?

Maybe. Maybe not.