GB baseball team catcher who wants to inspire girls

THE catcher of the Great Britain women’s baseball team says she wants to be a role model for young girls.

Marianna Casal, 21, is leading her team as they compete in the European Baseball Championships in Montpellier this week.

The team, which was founded last year, is taking on teams from France, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic in a round-robin style tournament, which ends with the final tomorrow (Saturday).

Miss Casal, who lives in Star Road, Caversham, says: “The aim is not to win but to put ourselves on the map. We’ll learn what we need to improve on and where we need to go.

“The thing with this team is there’s a handful of us who have been playing since we were young but there’s another handful who only started a few years ago.

“The other teams have probably grown up with it more because they’re from countries with more opportunities.

“Even if we do come back in fourth, we will have been the first women in Great Britain to go a baseball Euros. That is an achievement — we are making history.”

Miss Casal, who is a Henley Standard reporter, grew up in Hemel Hempstead with her parents Carlos and Miriam and older brother Carlos Jr.

Her parents emigrated to the UK from Venezuela in 1998 as her father was born here and had a British passport. At the time, her mother was seven months pregnant with Carlos Jr and shouldn’t have been flying so she wore several jackets to hide her belly.

Mr Casal now works as a software engineer and his wife is a special education needs teacher.

Baseball began in Venezuela in the Fifties and grew with American influence. Now there are eight professional teams and many players are scouted and exported to Major League Baseball. The sport is televised like football is here.

Mr Casal represented his country at football and was even coached by Pele and Jairzinho but baseball is the main sport in Venezuela so he began playing as a boy. He represented his country and started playing in Britain a year after the family emigrated.

As a child, Marianna grew up around baseball as her father played in the National Baseball League and coached in the Herts Little League, which her brother played in.

Carlos Jr now plays in the national league and has represented Great Britain at under-15, under-18 and under-23 levels.

Marianna would watch her father and brother play. She said: “In Latin American culture it’s very common to be there on the sidelines to support your family members, whether it’s a show, a presentation, sport, piano recital, whatever — you’re just there to share in the highs and lows. It’s a really wonderful thing.

“My brother and I were put into all sorts of sports and activities and my parents would even watch training or practice sessions if they could.

“It was never forced on me or my brother to cheer for each other but it was never a choice either — we were just born into a mentality where family is at the forefront.”

Despite this, it took a while for her to try baseball herself.

Miss Casal said: “I would travel to different countries to watch my brother play.

“I played a little bit but not much. I knew how to throw and to hit because I always joined in with my dad and brother. They made sure I was doing it properly, saying ‘put your arm like this’ or ‘move your hips more’.”

In 2014, Miss Casal was watching a baseball game in Prague in which some of her friends were playing.

She was throwing a ball with a friend when she was approached by Laura Hirai, a softball player who is a year older than her.

Miss Casal said: “She came up to me and said, ‘Why aren’t you playing’ and I said I just didn’t really see a trajectory as the boys were going to get big and strong.

“I had thought a little about it but just saw it as a guys’ thing. I now know that was the wrong mindset. Laura had grown up in Japan, where the sport is really big for men and women. She said, ‘Come and play softball then’ and I did.”

Miss Casal began playing for a softball team in the Great British League with Miss Hirai, who is also playing in this week’s baseball championships.

She asked her father and brother to train her. She said: didn’t normally like my dad telling me what to do but they said, ‘If this is going to happen, you need to listen to what we’re telling you’.

“We started training twice a week, working on everything from the basics and then gameplay. They definitely pushed me hard — I would even cry sometimes — but it was all worth it and I didn’t want to stop.

“I don’t do anything for fun. If I do anything — job, academic or sport — I want to be the best. I have always been taught to do the best I can do in anything. Both my parents are really hard-working.”

When she was 15, Miss Casal was the second youngest player in the GB under-19 women’s fast pitch softball team which won the European Championships.

In 2017, she decided to also play baseball after attending an academy session which mixed both sports. She played for an under-17s boys’ baseball team as well as her softball team.

She would fly to Spain at weekends to play for the country’s top women’s softball team in Valencia.

She said: “I would fly out on a Friday evening or Saturday morning and stay with my uncle Servio and his wife and kids. I would look after the kids sometimes.

“I would play two games and then fly back on Sunday evening. The next day I’d be in school. It was exhausting but I learned so much.”

Last year, after the coronavirus pandemic had brought playing to a halt, she decided to switch to baseball and started playing for a team in Hertfordshire in the National Baseball League.

The league teams are predominately male and Miss Casal has had to face more than just curveballs.

She said: “Me or my parents would hear little comments from guys like ‘Why is there a girl here’ or when a man was pitching and I got a hit off him, his team-mates would laugh at him.

“In some ways it’s funny because you’re proving them wrong but the other side of it is saying that a girl can’t hit a ball off a man who’s throwing it at 80mph.

“I know women’s baseball isn’t big but it’s always a surprise to them that I’m good.”

Miss Casal, who now plays second base for Richmond Knights, says that feeling she has to prove herself as a player affects her performance.

“The more I do that, the more tense I get and I make errors and lose confidence,” she said.

“When I just don’t focus on anyone else and it’s just me and my team having fun, that’s when I have the other team coming up to me after the game and saying, ‘Wow, you can really play’.”

She is proud to represent the GB women’s team and likes to delivers the pre-match cheer.

She said: “I say, ‘Lions on three, roar on three’, then I count to three and everyone shouts ‘Lions’ and then I do one more count and everyone roars, which is funny.

“It gets you pumped up and it also just brings the team together. Everyone brings their hands to the middle and screams together. This lifts everyone’s spirits and gets the adrenaline going.”

Miss Casal completed a journalism degree at City, University of London earlier this year and played for the Richmond Knights while studying.

She said: “I have so much love for them. They just see me as one of the players who genuinely brings something to the team. We’ve become a little family.”

Working as a full-time reporter has left her less time to train.

She said: “When I was at university, we could train midweek. Now I couldn’t finish work and go and play.

“Sometimes I’ll train with my dad at Farnham Park in Slough but it’s definitely hard to balance baseball with work.

“I still go to the gym. I do loads of throwing against a wall. I also do lots of hitting into a net by myself.” Miss Casal is being supported at the tournament in France by her family and boyfriend Luis Ramey, whom she met last year when they were playing on opposite sides in a game.

Her father is head coach of the team and her brother is also on the coaching side.

She said: “They’re amazing and the other women really look up to them but sometimes this means added pressure.

“When I do something bad or something good, I look over to my dad for feedback. He pushes me, and sometimes that is a little stressful, but it is what made me the player I am.”

Miss Casal hopes to inspire girls to take up the sport. She said: “The hope is that girls are going to see us and think, ‘Oh, I could do that’ and then we’d have a whole new generation of girls starting younger than our team did.

“I would have started playing a lot earlier if I’d had a woman to look to. I used to find that frustrating but I can use it as fuel now.

“I would tell young girls to be resilient and be strong. Don’t let something that seems like it’s for boys make you think that you can’t do it.

“My team are insanely resilient, strong women and they all balance so many things. There are some who have children. One of them is doing maths at Oxford University, two are doctors doing exams and working in a hospital every night and there are engineers too. It makes me proud.”