Carroll’s Smith breaks barrier
She will be pro baseball’s first Black woman coach
In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in August 2019, Bianca Smith expressed her desire to coach in the male-dominated sport of baseball but admitted it wouldn’t be easy.
“The hardest part is just getting the chance,” she said.
A remarkable chance has come Smith’s way. In a move first reported by the Boston Globe last week and confirmed by the team Monday evening, the Boston Red Sox hired Smith as a minor league coach, making her the first Black woman to serve as a coach in professional baseball history.
Smith, 29, was serving as assistant athletic director for compliance and administration at Carroll University in Waukesha, where she also was an assistant coach and hitting coordinator for the baseball team.
Smith will be assigned to the Red Sox’s training facility in Fort Myers, Florida, where she will work mainly with position players, according to MLB.com.
In a tweet she posted Tuesday, Smith said, “I am so incredibly grateful for all of the support I’ve been getting! Of course, none of this would be possible without the help of my family, friends and the trailblazers who came before me. I can’t wait to get started. Thank you
so much and go Red Sox!!
In an interview with the MLB Network, Smith said, “The opportunity is amazing. I’m still wrapping my head around it. I probably won’t really have it sink in until I’m actually there.
“I think it’s a great opportunity, also, to kind of inspire other women who are interested in this game. This is not really something I thought about when I was younger. I kind of fell into it being an athlete. So, I’m excited to get that chance to show what I can do.”
Smith’s hiring was yet another breakthrough for a woman in professional baseball.
Alyssa Nakken was hired last January as an assistant coach on the staff of new San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler.
Earlier this offseason, the Miami Marlins named longtime baseball executive Kim Ng their general manager, making her the first woman to hold that position in a major sport in North America.
Smith played softball at Dartmouth College, graduating in 2012.
She earned a Masters of Business Administration in sports management at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland. There, she also achieved a doctorate of jurisprudence with an emphasis in sports law.
Smith went on to serve as an assistant coach at the University of Dallas and held internships in the baseball departments of the Texas Rangers and Cincinnati Reds, where she did some on-field instructing while also analyzing data for the club.
Of her work at Carroll University, Smith told the MLB Network, “As the hitting coordinator, I run all of our technology side for hitting. The number of different resources that the Red Sox have as far as (technology) goes, I’m really exited to get my hands on that and learning the different metrics, and being able to dive deeper into what I currently have is pretty exciting.”