Attempting to take girls baseball in London to a place where it has never been before

A league where girls can play hardball against other girls past the age of 10.

It might seem strange but right now in the London area that doesn't really exist.

The Lady Tin Caps are attempting to push girls baseball to places it has never been before in the London area.

One of the people beginning the quest to change that is head coach Marcy Dilamarter who explained the way the world of baseball works for girls right now.

“As the girls trickle into the 11U age group, there's nowhere where girls can play together,” says Dilamarter. “So we see a huge shift of girls out into the softball program. Girls (can still) continue registering in our co-ed programs as old as they like… they often end up being very isolated where there's a roster where you may have 11 boys and one girl.”

If there weren’t enough girls to fill out a roster that would make sense.

But does not appear to be the case at all.

The Lady Tin Caps held a scout night in early September and more than 150 girls signed up to come out and either show their stuff or even give baseball a try as a new sport.

The demand appears to be very strong.

Dilamarter doesn’t look at what the Tin Caps are doing as revolutionary. They aren’t re-inventing the sport in any way.

They are simply looking to provide something that presently isn’t there.

“What we've had in the past is a very stable platform that's existed for a million years and this is new,” Dilamarter admitted. “It means taking a chance on something and we don't really know how it's going to go.”

Dilamarter’s own daughter described it as being able to play with, “your own people.”

The waters were tested this past summer with an all-tournament team and it had success.

So the seeds are in place.

And it appears that they could really be ready to grow.

“I'm really hopeful that we can continue to grow moving forward and maybe next season we'll have several Lady Tin Caps teams and maybe ten years from now it'll be its own standalone organization in our area,” said Dilamarter.

And why not?

Look at the growth of women’s sports.

Look at the examples that the Northern Professional Super League in soccer or the Professional Women’s Hockey League have set.

There is also the Women’s Pro Baseball League in the United States that began playing this year in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston.

Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer Kate Psota was at the scout night in London and took a look around at the entire growth of women’s sports as she helped players field ground balls and swing bats.

“This kind of stuff didn't exist when I was their age so to see all these young ladies coming together and feeling the excitement and a good buzz in the air is exciting,” explained Psota.

At the same time Dilamarter knows this won’t happen overnight.

“This will be one step at a time,” said Dilamarter. “So what is the first step? I'm trying to build a girls baseball organization where girls can play baseball together.”

And what could be a better first step than that?