Minnesota girl’s ‘dream come true’

L.L. WORLD SERIES

WASHINGTON • Look closely and you’ll have seen something unusual when the Little League World Series began Thursday. A blond ponytail was peeking out from one of the players’ helmets.

It belongs to Minnesotan Maddy Freking, a 12-year-old who is the only girl among the field of 16 teams playing in Williamsport, Pa., and she’s the first to play in the LLWS since Mo’ne Davis made headlines in 2014. Freking is only the 19th girl to play in the Series in its 72-year history.

“It’s a dream coming true,” Freking told Minneapolis’s Fox affiliate, “just to be there is really amazing.”

Freking is the starting second baseman for the Coon Rapids-Andover team that advanced to Williamsport as the Midwest champion. Freking, described as a “vacuum” at second, made headlines over the weekend when her sweet double play in the regional final turned up on ESPN’s SportsCenter in her team’s victory Saturday over Iowa. Her team was trailing 5-1 with the bases loaded in the fourth inning when she turned the DP and went on to an 8-6 victory on Jameson Kuznia’s three-run homer when the score was 5-5.

“Some people say, ‘Woah,’” Freking said of people’s reaction to seeing her (via the St. Paul Pioneer Press). “Some think it’s cool, some not so much.”

Her team played the Great Lakes champion team from Bowling Green, Ky., in a firstround game Thursday night.

“(We’re on) cloud nine,” Freking’s coach, Greg Bloom, told Fox 9. “When we started this process in June, we kind of knew we had the team that could make it, we just had to put a lot of work in to get there.”

In 1984, Victoria Roche, who played for the Brussels team, became the first girl to play in the LLWS, which changed its charter to allow girls to play in 1974. Five years after Roche’s appearance, Victoria Brucker of the Eastview team from California became the first American girl to play in the Series. Krissy Wendell, who went on to be the captain of the U.S. women’s hockey that won silver in the 2002 Olympics and bronze at the 2006 Games, played in 1994 for Minnesota’s Brooklyn Center team.

“It’s cool that there are only a few other girls in Little League and I’m one of them who have made it this far,” Freking told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

NAM Y. HUH / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Toronto Blue Jays starting pitcher Ryan Feierabend — throwing a knuckler earlier this season in Chicago — was a hard-throwing former third-round draft pick in 2003. Feierabend says that without the trick pitch, he would “be sitting at home trying to find a job.”

GENE J. PUSKAR / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Maddy Freking is the only girl among the field of 16 teams playing in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa.