By Amelia Friedman
Devlin sent in her form with a check mark next to baseball and an empty space beside softball. "I got three different phone calls from the Baldwin Little League office asking if I had checked the wrong box," she said.
Julianne, who's now 12, has been playing baseball since third grade, and she has always been the only girl on the team. But this summer she will finally get a chance to play ball with other talented girls. She was recently selected to be part of an all-girls squad that will compete in a tournament in Cooperstown, N.Y., with 95 other teams - all of them made up of boys.
Julianne isn't your average middle school student. At the end of her school day, she heads off to practice, whether it be baseball or her other athletic passion, hockey. On the diamond, she is the lead-off hitter for the otherwise all-boys South Shore Monarchs, which play in the National Tournament Baseball League.
On the ice, she was the two-year captain of the all-girls Island Waves and this year's Most Valuable Player. There are few such hockey teams on Long Island - the Waves' nearest competitors are in Westchester County - so Julianne is used to spending a lot of time on the road.
No matter how far she travels, however, her family is always there to support her. Her father, the Monarchs' assistant coach, Bob Devlin, said, "When we have to take long trips, we try to make it like a mini family vacation." Julianne's mother and her sister, Brianna, 15, come along as spectators and cheerleaders.
"She's willing to go that extra yard to pick up the slack," said Kathy Devlin. "She knows what it's going to take."
Kathy describes her daughter as good-hearted, good-natured and bubbly. Julianne is also self-disciplined, her mother said, describing how she taught herself to ride a bike at age 4. She is in honors classes at her middle school and has always been very focused, Kathy said, whether it be on sports or academics.
She plays on her middle school's basketball team as well. She is a Mets fan and an avid sports spectator, often tuning in to ESPN.
The baseball team she'll compete on at Cooperstown Dreams Park, the Sparks, was founded six years ago by Justine Siegal, the founder of the Women's Baseball League, which is based in Ohio. The squad will include girls from all over the U.S. and several from Canada. Players apply on the WBL Web site, listing their references and accomplishments. The Cooperstown event is the largest youth baseball tournament in the country, so Siegal seeks the best female players in the country in order to keep up with the competition.
When reviewing Julianne's application, Siegal was impressed by her all-star team statistics. "I knew I wanted her on the team because I knew she was ready for Cooperstown," Siegal said.
The WBL aims to offer opportunities for girls of all ages to play baseball, according to Siegal. "They're no longer just watching their brothers play," she said.
Since most girls play softball, those like Julianne who prefer baseball are used to competing with boys. Like most of the Sparks players, this will be her first time on an all-girls team. The athletes will gather in Cooperstown only a day before the tournament to get to know one another, so they won't have much time to prepare before they begin squaring off against boys' teams that have been practicing together for seasons.
"Our biggest challenge is not that we're girls," said Siegal. "It's that we don't get the practice time the other teams get."
Whatever the outcome, all Sparks team members are inducted into the American Youth Baseball Hall of Fame after the Cooperstown tournament. And in the last five years, three Sparks alumnae have made the USA Baseball Women's National Team at age 15.
At home, Julianne is just a Monarch. Boy or girl - if you can play, you're on the team. "The boys took her under their wing," said Kathy Devlin. "And now she's really just one of the guys."
"There is no gender here," said Monarchs coach Rich Vignogna. "When you're an athlete, it just doesn't matter." Especially when you're an athlete who's as talented as Julianne, who pitches, catches and plays the infield. "I'd like to have 14 players like Julie on the team," Vignogna added.
It doesn't matter to the other Monarchs that one of their star players is a girl, but every so often, someone on an opposing team will comment. "They'll say, 'Wait - that's a girl!'" Bob Devlin said.
For her part, Julianne simply ignores them. "I just rub it off," she said, "and if I'm pitching, I just strike 'em out."
When Vignogna first saw Julianne play about a year ago, he recalled, he thought she was phenomenal. He describes Julianne as personable, a team player and a real competitor. "She keeps the team motivated," he said. And according to Vignogna, other coaches, too, are impressed by her skills.
Julianne tried softball when she was younger, but, her dad said, "it didn't pose the challenge [that baseball did]."
At present, she is considering switching to softball because, according to her mother, the boys do get bigger and it might get harder to make the baseball teams. But for now, she is still pitching hardball.
After all, they don't play softball in Cooperstown.
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