Thirty years ago, Marlo Ibarra coached and managed youth baseball teams in Elgin on which her son, Jose, and daughter, Lessia, played. Lessia was 7 years old and didn’t want to play softball with the girls.
Coming full circle, this summer and fall Ibarra and her husband, Jose, watched their twin grandchildren, Lia and Levi, play the same game in South Elgin. As was the case with her daughter, her 7-year-old granddaughter was the only girl on the team.
“I often found myself wanting to coach from the other side of the fence because it brought back so many memories of when my own children played,” Marlo Ibarra said. “In many ways it was like getting to relive those special years all over again.”
Girls playing baseball and their moms coaching them was a rarity in the late 1990s. Ibarra said she volunteered to manage and coach because she wanted to be involved with her kids’ experience and support the teams on which they played.
Ibarra coached and managed for four years, starting with T-ball and then, as her children grew, with three youth teams.
She found it both exciting and intimidating.
“I had never coached before and didn’t know a lot about baseball when I first started,” she said. “Being the only woman at the time coaching in an all-boys league wasn’t always easy and some of the moms didn’t think I should have the position. Despite that, it was a rewarding experience and I loved being part of the kids’ growth and development in the game.”
Lessia Ibarra Colorado remembers those days. She grew up in Streamwood wanting to follow in her older brother’s footsteps.
“I looked up to him and wanted to do many of the same activities he did. Playing baseball was one of those things,” she said.
Being the only girl on the team never felt like a big deal, Colorado said.
“I was simply another kid who loved playing baseball,” she said. “I always felt accepted. My family was well known in the community and I had already played T-ball with many of the boys. Some of them were family friends so I knew several of my teammates before joining the team.”
While she hoped to be as naturally talented as her brother, Colorado said baseball didn’t come as easily to her as it did to him.
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“Even so, I had a lot of fun playing, learned a great deal about the game and enjoyed being part of a team,” she said.
When T-ball season began in May, Colorado and her husband, David, asked Lia if she wanted to play baseball or to join the softball team with some of her girlfriends.
“I had mentioned to Lia that I played baseball as a child but I never really went into detail about choosing baseball over softball,” Lessia Colorado said.
Lia made the decision to try baseball on her own. She liked the smaller ball better and she wanted to play alongside her brother.
“I thought softball would be tricky,” Lia said. “Being the only girl on the team feels different from T-ball because that season we had boys and girls. And it makes me want to practice harder and show how good I can be.”
In August, the twins joined the beginning coach-pitch baseball team and on Oct. 17 finished the season with the South Elgin Little League. For the fall session, 19 players were combined into one group to practice and then divided into two rotating teams, meaning the brother and sister sometimes faced off against each other.
An instructional league, the focus is on getting the youngsters to focus and on team building. When batting, a player faces an adult who pitches slow and underhanded for four throws. If the batter doesn’t make contact with the ball, they have a chance to hit it off a tee.
As for what they like about baseball, Lia said it’s batting and running the bases while Levi said for him it’s all about the secret handshake — an elaborate one that frequently ends with hugs and laughs.
With the change of seasons, Levi said he’s going to play basketball while Lia plans to do gymnastics. Both will continue with karate.
Letting her children try different things is something Lessia Colorado said she learned from her mother, who has been there to support her and her family and encouraged her in her career path as a circulating operating room nurse.
“I always told Lessia she could do anything she put her mind to do,” Ibarra said. “Those were the words I spoke to her when she decided to play on the all-boys team.”
Colorado said she and her family are fans of the Savannah Bananas and particularly their sole female player Kelsie Whitmore.
“A woman competing at such a high level alongside men was exciting and inspiring,” she said. “When we learned that Kelsie had been drafted into the new Women’s Pro Baseball League, I was thrilled to tell Lia that there was finally a professional baseball league specifically for women. It completely changed her perspective on what was possible.”
Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The (Elgin) Courier-News.