A baseball collided with the face of 11-year-old Jordan Andreas, who had been standing at the plate.
Andreas wiped away the blood and shed just a single tear — the only tear Standout Baseball’s Kevin Batista had ever seen roll down Andreas’ cheek.
Andreas, who grew up in Las Vegas before moving to St. George a few years ago, was the only girl in Batista’s Standout Baseball infield training class with a dozen boys.
“There was a time right there where she could have been there, and all those boys would have said, ‘Oh, there she goes. She’s a girl. Can’t handle it,’” Batista said.
But Andreas toughed it out, as well as all the other shots to the finger and chest she took — not to mention all the mental shots — because, as Batista said, “she’s just built different.”
“There’s always those few teams that like to say things to try to put me down or to try to get me to reconsider, but I usually use those things to fuel my passion almost and it makes me want to just be better in a way,” Andreas told the Deseret News. “It makes me want to prove them wrong because I know that my game is at a certain level and I know I can compete.”
Now, six years after that baseball to the face, Andreas is a varsity pitcher and first baseman at St. George’s Dixie High School — and the first girl to make the team. Andreas is a top 40 prospect for the U.S. women’s national baseball team and an eligible prospect in Thursday’s inaugural Women’s Pro Baseball League draft.
“I’m not the only female in baseball,” Andreas, a junior, said, “and it makes me want to also do it for my other teammates and other girls in the game, because the game for women is growing so much and we just want to prove that there is a spot for us in baseball.”
Baseball roots
Andreas’ baseball career started when she was about 6 years old and tagged along with her older brother, Jake, and her dad, Braden, to the baseball field. There, she’d join in on the throwing session.
“I really just kind of fell in love with the game by doing this,” she said.
Andreas would have more fun on the diamond than in the dance classes she was taking at the time.
Her father, Braden Andreas, said that “it was very, very apparent that her happy spot was being out on the baseball field with Dad and her brother.”
After that realization, he quickly had his daughter try out for Little League Baseball and a club baseball team in Las Vegas.
“It just dawned on me as a dad that why shouldn’t my daughter be able to play baseball?” he said. “If she’s this happy playing baseball with us and she’s told me that she wants to play baseball, well, it’s kind of my obligation to help my daughter, not only achieve happiness, but to basically pursue anything that puts a smile on her face to that magnitude.”
Andreas didn’t stop at Little League and club. Over the years, she has attended several MLB Develops series, initiatives geared specifically for girls’ baseball development, including the Breakthrough Series earlier this month.
“The thing with Jordan is, she didn’t just want to play baseball. She wanted to be the best baseball player she could possibly be,” her dad said.
Unlike most girls who play baseball, Andreas chose to not play softball and to focus solely on baseball.
“My main passion is pitching, which is definitely exclusive to the baseball side rather than baseball and softball, which is one of the main reasons why I chose baseball as a sport,” she said.
Andreas needed to do more than throw a baseball well if she wanted to succeed in the male-dominated sport. From a young age, she committed to developing and improving all aspects of her game.
“She was coached and trained just as hard, if not harder, than others because she’s got to go break through these little limiting beliefs that some certain adults have,” Batista said.
When she was 10, she first started working with Batista alongside her older brother.
“Her baseball acumen was always through the roof. Her mental fortitude was second to none,” Batista said.
In addition to Batista, Andreas also worked on her hitting with Mike Easler, a 14-year MLB veteran. Easler had coached softball before but had never coached a girl of Andreas’ caliber in baseball, he said.
“She’ll blast you, too, because she had power. I mean, she had power in that swing,” Easler said.
With Easler, Andreas worked on her balance, body control and reading the ball. They also improved her hitting against breaking pitches.
“I think I helped her realize what talent she had as far as swinging the bat, but as far as pitching, she just had that naturally,” Easler said.
Her pitching is what caught the attention of Pathway Baseball scouts. Once Scott Haney, one of those scouts, saw Andreas pitch in the Pathway Utah Tournament, he called director Gino Grasso and said, “Hey, we have to get this girl.”
“She’s extremely poised as a pitcher. She has confidence. She controls the mound. She doesn’t get flustered. She knows how to pitch,” Grasso said.
Pathway scouts evaluate 5,000 players each year and then select 132 players for its annual Prospects Game, which gives uncommitted players the chance to showcase their skills in front of college coaches.
This year, Andreas was invited to the 2026 Prospects Game in San Diego. She’s the first girl to ever be selected for the Prospect Game.
“She’s a legit pitcher, and that’s why we selected her. I think she threw, like, 80 pitches. I think 50-plus were strikes. So she really had what we looked for when we invite people to our Prospect Games in San Diego, because that’s only for the top players,“ Grasso said. ”She had everything we look for to get an invite.”
Despite her talent and dedication to baseball, Andreas has had more than her fair share of doubters, with hecklers and even some coaches who were unwilling to give her a shot just because she’s a girl.
Her father said that at the start of games, he’s “heard some very horrible and graphic sound bites — things that should never come out of an adult’s mouth.”
Then after those individuals watch his daughter pitch, they’re “blown away and can’t even believe what has happened, and that includes some of the best coaches in the entire country.”
Life as a female in baseball
The opportunities for women to play professional baseball in the U.S. have been few.
Women first had the opportunity in 1943 with the launch of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Hundreds of women had tried out for the inaugural season, but only 60 women were selected, according to the league.
The league started with four teams — Kenosha Comets, Racine Belles, Rockford Peaches and South Bend Blue Sox — and eventually grew to 10. It led to the creation of minor and junior leagues.
It ultimately folded after the 1954 season after having given over 600 women the opportunity to play professional baseball.
A year after the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League’s inaugural season, another league, the National Girls Baseball League, would also launch. It too would fold in 1954.
The International Girls Baseball League also tried to capitalize on the movement the sport was experiencing — this time as a winter league running from the end of 1952 into the beginning of 1953. But it failed to make it a full season before canceling.
Women’s baseball would get another shot in 1997 with Ladies League Baseball, but that didn’t last long either. Following its inaugural season with four teams, it rebranded itself as the Ladies Professional Baseball League and only made it 16 games before disbanding, according to the AAGPBL.
“There’s very few opportunities available,“ said Alex Oglesby, an assistant coach with the women’s national team. ”Finding these opportunities, I think is the hardest part, and then once they walk on the field, they prove themselves and are welcomed in the game.”
Oglesby knows what it takes for a woman to play. At just 17 — Andreas’ age — Oglesby won the first Ladies League Baseball World Series championship with the San Jose Spitfires, earning Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year honors along the way.
Andreas first learned of the national team when she was about 12 or 13 years old while at the MLB Develops’ Trailblazer series.
“From that day on, I was like, ‘Wow, like that’s my dream. I want to play women’s baseball with the women’s USA team,’” she said.
Andreas would have to wait until she was 16, the minimum age for a player to be eligible, before she could get her first experience with the national team.
While she enjoys her teammates at Dixie High, who she says have been “super respective and supportive,” she’s found a different camaraderie with the national team.
“With the girls, it’s really almost like a family, like a community, because we all have the same goal,” she said. “We all have been through similar experiences growing up in baseball, playing with all the guys, and we were just able to, like, bond in a way through that.”
At 16, Andreas made the national team’s Top 40 Prospects list. This year, she earned the honor again.
As a Top 40 prospect, Andreas is on a path to the national team, where she can eventually represent her country at future Pan-American Championships and International Baseball Federation Women’s Baseball World Cups.
Oglesby raved about Andreas’ prowess on the diamond, but Oglesby has been more impressed by the person Andreas is.
“She’s an incredible player, she’s a great ball player,” Oglesby said. “But who she is as a person actually impressed me even more than that. She is just a true-hearted, great person who is going to dig deep and work hard and put herself into uncomfortable position. She’s not afraid to get uncomfortable on the field.”
What’s next for Jordan Andreas?
Andreas wants to help Dixie High win a state championship and then she hopes to pitch for a Division I program. She looks up to Brown’s Olivia Pichardo, who was the first female to make a Division I roster and also the first to play in a Division I game.
“I really just want to be like her,” she said.
Andreas is focused this year on getting the attention of college coaches, so she can fulfill that dream.
“If you were to take her out there and put her in a college game with young men, she would do more than hold her own,” Batista said.
With the launch of the new Women’s Pro Baseball League, Andreas’ future could include a professional career. For the league’s inaugural draft, which is Thursday, Andreas was named an eligible prospect.
To preserve her high school and collegiate eligibility, Andreas will likely forgo playing professionally for now. But Oglesby hopes she’ll have a shot at the WPBL in the future.
“That’s where her future lies along with a lot of these girls, but I think for her, I could definitely see her being somebody in that path,” Oglesby said.
Batista sees his former player as an ambassador for women’s baseball.
“With regards to women’s pro leagues and baseball, I mean, she would be in the upper echelon of that, in my opinion,” he said. ”I believe she can be the next huge ambassador to women’s baseball."
Until then, Andreas will continue to focus on playing the game she loves and being the best player she can be. Her advice to other girls interested in playing baseball? “Stick with it.”
“Knowing that there’s other girls out there like you and that you have a place in this game, I think that’s super important. So just stick with it and believe in yourself.”