A girls baseball camp in Cincinnati this weekend is hosted by two players from the new Women’s Pro Baseball League. Both players are from Ohio, including Cincinnati’s own Olivia Bricker, who was drafted to play for Boston.
"This is the first WPBL sponsored camp, and it's in my hometown," Bricker said. "I love it."
The other camp leader is London Studer from the Columbus area, drafted to play for New York.
Bricker says the camp is for girls ages 8-16 of all skill levels.
"What we really want girls to get out of this camp is to fall in love with baseball like I myself did, and everyone involved in this league did," she said. "We want them to take away something they can learn, whether that's for baseball, whether that's for softball — the skills are very transferable."
The camp is part of celebrations for National Girls and Women in Sports Day on Feb. 4. It's co-hosted by the Miami Valley Valkyries, a local nonprofit founded in 2024 that offers baseball training and competition for girls, and Baseball for All, a national nonprofit that works for gender equity in baseball.
"Growing up, we had to play with the boys because that was the only opportunity we had," Bricker said. "This league is expanding into a trailblazer series, a pipeline series, to get girls involved in multiple sports."
The WPBL is set to start its first season in Springfield, Illinois, in August. There are four teams for the first season: New York, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Bricker says the league hopes to expand into more cities in the future. In the meantime, they're working to ramp up excitement for the first season.
"We're going to have events in different cities to grow the word and to get more of a fan base, hopefully for Boston," she said. "But you know, Cincinnati could potentially be one of those spots, but we are unsure on where those locations are right now."
The league was co-founded by Jistine Siegal, the first woman to coach a professional men's baseball team (the Brockton Rox of the Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball) and to pitch batting practice in Major League Baseball (for the now-Cleveland Guardians in 2011).
Camp details
The camp is free and no registration is required. Girls ages 8 to 16 of all skill levels can participate.
It takes place Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Champions Baseball Academy (5994 Linneman St.) in Cincinnati’s California neighborhood.
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