Olivia Pichardo, First Female to Play Division I Baseball, Is Honing Her Game in the HCBL This Summer

Olivia Pichardo describes herself as someone who is good under pressure. It’s something she’s learned about herself over the last few months, when there’s been no shortage of it in her life, put on her by the glare of the national media spotlight, by the demands inherent with being a student-athlete at one of the most academically prestigious universities in the country, and perhaps most of all by herself.

On March 17, Pichardo made history, becoming the first female baseball player to compete in a game at the Division I level. In the bottom of ninth inning of a 10-1 loss to Bryant College, Pichardo grounded out sharply in a pinch-hit at-bat for the Brown University baseball team, where she had earned a spot on the squad as a walk-on in November.

Simply making the team was the result of years of hard work on the baseball diamond, and since joining the squad, Pichardo has been doggedly intent on making herself the best baseball player she can be.

The Queens native will be fine-tuning her game on the East End this summer, playing for the Sag Harbor Whalers in the Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League.

Pichardo is not the first female baseball player to compete in the HCBL. In the summer of 2021, Marika Lyszczyk, who plays for the Division II Sonoma State baseball team, played for the Whalers as well.

Pichardo made an immediate impact on opening day of the Hamptons baseball season this year, breaking up a no-hitter in the fifth inning with a single in her first action in a Whalers uniform. Earlier this week, the outfielder/pitcher picked up the W for the HCBL on its first day competing in the National Alliance of Summer College Baseball (NASCB) Prospect Games, which brings together some of the top players from several summer college baseball leagues across the country to compete against each other, this year at Liberty University in Virginia.

Pichardo has one simple goal this summer — to improve as much as possible at the sport she loves and has been dedicated to this since her father, Max Pichardo, started coaching her and taking her to local ballparks, when she was just 6 years old, in and around the Jackson Heights and Astoria neighborhoods where she grew up.

Her love for the game has not waned despite the fact that being a female playing what is traditionally considered a men’s sport has been an uphill battle at times, providing a constant test of both her physical and mental fortitude. Earning and keeping her spot on a Division I team has required an intense commitment of time and energy beyond the regular practice and conditioning hours, and Pichardo is also serious about her academic pursuits at an Ivy League school known for high standards in the classroom.

“I had a pretty rough first semester just making the adjustment from high school to college,” Pichardo admitted in an interview after her pitching victory for the HCBL team down in Virginia. Trying to balance the dual demands of her schoolwork and baseball wasn’t easy, she said, likening it to “having to do two full-time things at once,” although she added she was appreciative of the support provided to her by her coach, Grant Achilles, and members of the athletic department support staff at Brown, which helped her handle the flood of media requests that came in during the school year.

Pichardo estimated that she participated in more than 30 interviews during that time, as national outlets and big names like ESPN were eager to report on her status as the first female to play for a Division I team, waiting for the day that she’d earn her first at-bat. Pichardo spent much of her Thanksgiving break giving interviews, trying to respond to requests and direct messages on her social media accounts.

“I’m pretty good under pressure and pretty good at handling stressful situations, but that was particularly a lot,” she said.

Pichardo will be free from some of that pressure this summer, at least from an academic standpoint, but she certainly isn’t taking her foot off the gas.

Sandi Kruel, president of the Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League, said that Pichardo’s work ethic has been apparent from the start.

“She’s one of the hardest working players I’ve seen in a very long time,” she said.

Kruel was impressed when she noticed Pichardo running poles after one of her first pitching outings — meaning she ran a series of sprints back and forth between the outfield foul poles after the game.

“I haven’t seen a player run poles in a long time,” she said. “Pitchers used to do it years ago, to build up strength in their legs, but you don’t see that from hardly any players anymore. She does it after every game.

“She’s a real hard worker,” Kruel added. “She’s just a grinder.”

That kind of attitude and approach to the game has earned Pichardo instant respect in the dugout. She’s also been around the game at the top levels for a long time, as well.

Pichardo played Little League before graduating to PONY baseball, the next level of travel baseball for children who age out of Little League at the age of 12 (the acronym stands for Protect Our Nation’s Youth).

Pichardo attended The Garden School, a small private school in Jackson Heights, from nursery school through her senior year. The school failed to have enough players to field a varsity baseball team by the time she reached high school, so the PONY League provided a way for Pichardo to continue playing competitive baseball. When she was 14, Pichardo threw a no-hitter with 14 strikeouts. By the time she was 15, she appeared on PIX11 news.

Bigger opportunities followed. In 2017, Pichardo played in the Trailblazer Series, a tournament run by both Major League Baseball and USA Baseball for girls, as well as in the MLB Grit program, another baseball opportunity created specifically for girls, where they can show off their skills in front of scouts.

Pichardo met Lyszczyk, who is two years older than her, at MLB Grit, when they played on the same team together.

“She reached out to me when I was going through the college recruitment process and offered advice, saying she wanted to help in any way she could,” Pichardo said. “She gave me some encouraging words, and I really appreciated that from her. I couldn’t have predicted that I’d end up playing on the same team she played on in the Hamptons League.”

Throughout the years, as she continued to improve and show her dedication to the sport, the one question that would repeatedly come up for Pichardo was why she chose to stick with baseball rather than make the jump to softball.

The sexism inherent in the whack-a-mole insistence of that question does not seem to bother Pichardo. She is soft spoken but thoughtful when it comes to unpacking what’s behind the constant need for people to ask her why she’s stuck with baseball, and she displays a preternatural balance of self-awareness and self-assurance in her responses to it.

“I think it’s a perfectly sensible question,” she said. “If I wasn’t in the position I’m in now, I would ask it, too, because it’s not common for girls to play baseball. Especially when they get older, because our bodies change, and guys’ bodies get stronger faster, so we kind of develop physically at a slower pace — it’s just physiologically and biologically true.”

Pichardo admitted that the extra work it requires to try to bridge that gap can be frustrating at times, but it never led her to reconsider her commitment to being on a baseball diamond.

“A lot of people have tried to push me toward softball or asked me when I’m going to play softball, as if it was a definite thing that was going to happen,” she continued. “I never considered playing softball. My answer was always, never. Not because I have anything against it, but because I’m good at playing baseball.”

Continuing to shine at baseball, and get even better, is Pichardo’s sole focus this summer. She is living in Sag Harbor, a stone’s throw from the baseball field at Mashashimuet Park, and plans to log as many hours there as possible. It’s been a nearly lifelong love affair for the 19-year-old, whose love for the sport she owes to her father.

“He instilled the love for baseball in me,” she said. “He grew up loving baseball and never really had a chance to play on an organized team, so we’d go around to different playgrounds and play baseball and other neighborhood kids would join in.”

Since then, Pichardo said she’s tried to learn and take something from every coach or trainer she’s ever had. That determination has always helped her earn the respect of her teammates. Knowing that they treat her like any other player, and show her the kind of respect she deserves makes it easier for Pichardo to handle the occasional “microaggressions,” as she calls them, from people who may have an issue — conscious or not — with a female playing on a baseball team. Online discourse can be negative from time to time, she said, but her approach to that kind of behavior also reflects her ability to take things in stride.

“People are allowed to express what they want to say,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Not all criticism is negative. I think it’s important to raise questions and have civil discourse.”

It’s doubtful any of that will be on Pichardo’s mind this summer.

“I’m just trying to focus on being in the present right now,” she said. “And be the best athlete I can be each day. I want to take advantage of having my only focus be baseball, and dedicate all my time and energy into baseball this summer.”