Although Plant City was represented by two ballplayers in last week’s USA Baseball Women’s tryouts, only Chelsea Baker had played baseball before.
The Durant High School junior, along with Plant City High School grad Kendall Dawson, traveled last week to Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, with hopes of making the national team in August. The tryout camp consisted of a series of games, breaking the hopefuls up into two teams — Stars and Stripes — and holding an exhibition game each day.
Baker and Dawson had very different experiences, but both came back to the Winter Strawberry Capital with positive expectations.
SAME GAME, NEW FACES
Although Baker’s thoroughly-covered baseball career has taken her as far from home as Japan, she doesn’t yet have nerves of steel.
“I was too nervous to throw the ball, at first,” Baker says. “But, then I got to know everyone. I did pretty good.”
She wasn’t necessarily the youngest person there; there were two other girls her age trying out. Still, as a 16-year-old competing against women almost a decade her senior, those pre-game nerves are understandable.
Although she wanted to try her hand at playing first base, a position she hasn’t played since Little League, the coaches wanted Baker to stick to pitching for the Stripes team. She got four total innings of action, and pitched pretty well — at one point retiring five batters over two innings in Jan. 7’s 9-4 loss to the Stars.
She was caught by Anna Kimbrell, whom Baker says is likely to be the USA team’s primary catcher. Dawson was picked up by the Stars team and did not catch Baker at any point in the week.
When it was all said and done, Baker immediately had to go back to being a kid again. And, it might have been at the worst time ever for a high-schooler.
“I missed exam review week, so I had to get all of the review packets from my classmates,” Baker says. “I got back from Boca Raton and had to take exams right away.”
Although Baker only saw four innings of action in the tournament, Dawson was given plenty of time to adjust to the game — which was completely new to her.
QUICK LEARNER
Dawson, 24, had just finished up her first season as a graduate assistant for St. Leo University’s softball team, which had won its conference for the first time in school history. She wanted to try something new, and one of her old coaches at Alabama helped link her up with baseball.
Alyson Habetz, now ‘Bama’s associate head coach, introduced Dawson to Jenny Dalton-Hill, a USA Baseball Women’s team coach, who encouraged the former Lady Raider standout to try something new.
“It was really fun,” Dawson says. “And it was different: I’ve never played baseball before. I met lots of cool people.”
Other than a brief career in tee-ball, Dawson had always stuck to softball. So, to her, the tryouts in Boca were kind of an eye-opener.
“There was a transition,” Dawson says. “Yeah, the field’s a little bigger, but base-running is different. Catching is different. There’s more time to make a play — softball goes at a faster pace.”
In addition to adjusting her catching style for the game, her base-running got her in trouble a few times. Baseball players are granted more room to lead off of the bag, and Dawson sometimes strayed a little too far from the base. As a result, she got picked off a few times. One thing that she didn’t have much difficulty with, though, was her hitting.
“I did hit pretty well,” Dawson says. “I batted about .500 with a few RBI.”
Ultimately, she had fun getting back on a diamond and trying to earn a spot on the national team. It was a nice break from her duties at St. Leo, which have largely kept her in the dugout.
CATCHING UP
When the Plant City Times & Observer last spoke with Dawson, she had just finished her career at Alabama and moved on to St. Leo as a graduate assistant. One year later, she’s wrapped up one historic season and is preparing to start again.
“Last season, we won the conference for the first time ever,” Dawson says. “This season starts in two weeks. We’ve got a lot of girls returning.”
She primarily worked with the pitchers in the 2012-13 season, but will now work with the infielders. She’d just like to team to take things one game at a time and ultimately advance further in regionals than it did last season.
“I enjoy working with the girls,” Dawson says. “I love just being around the team. That was my favorite thing when I was playing.”
When she’s not coaching, she’s working on her master’s degree in sports business. As with many college students, she’s not sure what she wants to do yet. For now, she’s focused on her studies and her softball team, and she’ll be back on the baseball grind in August, when tryouts resume at USA Baseball’s facility, in North Carolina. The goal is to get to Japan with the team in September.
“(The coaches) were really positive to me in my meeting, and they said they liked me,” Dawson says. “I think I have a pretty good chance.”
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.
ABOUT THE TEAM
The USA Baseball Women’s Team was created in 2004, and immediately won a gold medal at the IBAF Women’s Baseball World Cup. They won gold again in 2006 and bronze in 2010. In September, the team will travel to Miyazaki, Japan, to compete in the WBSC Women’s Baseball World Cup.