She was good enough to represent the United States at the World Children's Baseball Fair as one of only two girls, but 12-year-old Irina Kovach is still fighting for acceptance in a community baseball league.
By Wandoo Makurdi
“Three strikes, you're out!” is a phrase Irina Kovach is used to hearing as a baseball pitcher, but when the 12-year-old tried to join her community's Little League baseball team, she was the one getting struck out…out of the team that is.
Irina, of New Carlisle, Ind., was one of two girls who represented the United States at the 2006 World Children's Baseball Fair in Japan, but when she tried to sign up to play in the Rolling Prairie Baseball Association's (RPBA)12- to 14-year-old Intermediate Division in January, she was turned down because of her gender and offered softball.
On April 13, 2007, the Women's Sports Foundation spoke to Dan Bealor, the president of the Kankakee Valley Association (KVA), the organization that governs the RPBA, who said that Irina would be allowed to play this season. That was three months ago.
When Irina didn't hear from the RPBA or KVA, John Kovach, her father, contacted the RPBA and was told by its president, Mike Winter, that there had been a misunderstanding. The decision to let Irina play rested in a majority vote of approval from the coaches of the league. According to Kovach, the decision was supposed to be made on April 22, but no one from the league has contacted them about the decision.
Since then, Kovach said he tried to contact the league through an attorney and several e-mails, but got no response.
“My feeling is maybe they think the issue will go away,” Kovach said about their non-response. He is currently trying to get the Civil Rights Commission involved in the case.
One of the problems the Kovaches are facing is that the KVA is a community league, so laws that govern the National Little League, such as equal opportunities for girls to play baseball, do not apply in all cases to the KVA. While girls like Samantha Martin, a pitcher for the Middleton Little League, and Leanne Elefterakis and Lindsay Holcomb of the Downtown Little League (DLL) have benefited from the law, Irina can only settle for playing with the Women's Blue Sox team, coached by her father.
Although the season has ended, Kovach is still hoping his daughter gets a chance to play in the league. He knows that there is no guarantee she'll get to play even if she's allowed to try out. “Some [teams] allow tryouts and just decide a girl isn't good enough to avoid letting her play,” Kovach said. “Most leagues wonder where a girl can go with playing baseball.”
That appears to be the case, at least, for the RPBA. The initial decision to deny Irina the chance to play was made after the athletic director of a local high school suggested that letting her play now would only fuel her drive to play at the high school level, which he did not want.
For those who make the argument that girls cannot succeed in a sport played with boys, they only need to go back a month to the historical match-up in the DLL, one of the largest leagues in the country, between Leanne and Lindsay. On June 6, the two became part of history as the first girls to pitch against each other in a baseball game.
Irina doesn't understand why playing baseball with the boys is still such a big issue and admits being embarrassed by the situation.
“…Our town is small and pretty much everyone knows I play baseball. When they asked me how I was doing this year, it was hard to tell them I wasn't allowed to play this season because I was a girl,” she said.
While representing her country is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity Irina will always remember, getting turned down by your community league ranks up there with moments she never wishes others to experience.
“… I hope that doesn't happen to other girls who like to play baseball,” she said.