She grew up playing baseball. At this NC high school, she found a home on the team
Meredith McFadden turned the question around.
She was asked what made her choose to play baseball at Olympic High, rather than compete as a member of the girls’ softball team.
“Why would I not want to play baseball?” McFadden, a catcher and infielder at Olympic, asked in return.
“This is the sport I grew up playing,” she said. “This is the language I know.”
McFadden, a senior, is part of a rebirth of baseball at Olympic under head coach Tommy Small.
With a strong feeder system through the Pineville Little League program, Olympic was a baseball power until about a decade ago. Small, former head coach at Mount Pleasant High, came to Olympic in 2019.
The Trojans got off to a big start this season, winning their first seven games. They have tailed off a bit in the last few weeks, encountering SoMeck 7 4A powers Ardrey Kell and Providence, but they take an 8-5 record into their regular-season finale Thursday at home against Ardrey Kell. And they retain an outside shot of gaining a 4A playoff berth later this month; the field is announced Saturday.
A big part of the surge, Small says, is due to a core group of players who came up through the Steele Creek and Pineville youth baseball programs.
McFadden was part of that group.
“I grew up with most of the guys on this team,” she said. “My older brother (Colin) played baseball, and I went to all the practices. I liked the game, and that’s what I played. I’ve always played baseball.”
Small said McFadden is a solid defensive player who holds her own at the plate and has hit around .250 or better in her high school career.
“She doesn’t have the power that you might see in some players, but she hits the ball through the gaps and gets on base,” he added.
When she isn’t catching, she starts at second base.
McFadden got the attention of Major League Baseball, which invited her to the Girls Baseball Breakthrough Camp in 2018 in Florida. She was among about 60 girls who are the only female members of their high school baseball teams.
“Their stories sounded a lot alike,” McFadden said of the ballplayers she met at the camp. “Some of the girls got more push back than I did.
“I was lucky. I don’t think the guys here at Olympic thought twice about it. I was always accepted.”
Small says when he first became Olympic’s coach, he called a meeting of prospective baseball players.
“I thought she was a manager,” he recalled.
Then he held a practice.
“Meredith was out there, and I remember saying, ‘Dang! She is fundamentally sound!’ Her technique, her fundamentals … she knew what she was doing.”
McFadden’s father, Mike, said he and his wife, Heather, never worried about their daughter playing baseball. “She spent a lot of time around the field,” he said. “She grew up on this sport. We’re really proud of what she has done.”
Her academic fundamentals are pretty good, too. She carries a 4.6 grade-point average (on a 5.0 scale) and is president of Olympic’s National Honor Society chapter. She graduated last week with honors.
What’s next?
McFadden hopes to make the U.S. Women’s Baseball Team next year and will attend the University of South Carolina in the fall.
While you probably won’t see her playing with the Gamecocks, a perennial SEC power, she hopes to help the baseball team in Columbia.
“What I’d really like to do is get a spot on the (Gamecocks’) baseball team as a bullpen catcher,” she said. “I think that could help girls elsewhere.
“If coaches see that we can handle a job, like bullpen catcher, it opens the door for other girls like me who love baseball.”
This story was originally published June 9, 2021 at 1:54 PM.
