Cape Coral teen finds passion in baseball

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CAPE CORAL, Fla. Sophia Mathewson prefers swinging at a baseball over a softball.

“Softball just doesn’t really have a feel for me,” she said. “I just love the game of baseball and I just think it can help a lot of other girls to see another girl play baseball.”

Mathewson, an eighth-grader at Diplomat Middle School, could help the Cape Coral High School baseball team make a playoff run as a freshmen next year.

“I just love the game in general,” she said. “It’s just so fun to play and you have to think about things and use your brain. Just a mental game.”

The 14-year-old can play both the infield and outfield, but is primarily a pitcher with three different pitches in her arsenal.

But playing baseball as a girl has attracted some negative attention.

“She has lost the opportunity to play for some teams simply because she’s a girl,” said Cape Coral High JV baseball coach Jim Hill.

While Mathewson is aware of the negative comments, she ignores the naysayers and focuses on her goals instead, which is to get a college scholarship and possibly drafted.

“I just want to play because I love the game so much,” she said. “We just all want to be baseball players, girl or boy. It doesn’t matter.”

Girls are allowed to play on boys teams if the school doesn’t have a girls team in that particular sport, such as baseball, football or wrestling. However, the same rule doesn’t apply to boys.

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