Kelsie Whitmore Catches On With Staten Island FerryHawks

But in high school, Whitmore wondered if she had the mental stamina to press on.

“I started to get that feeling of, am I not supposed to be here?” Whitmore said. “Do I not belong here? People keep asking me why I’m here, people are wondering, outsiders are trying to push me toward a different route. It started to mess with my head.”

Loneliness became a factor, too. Always the only girl, the standout, the outlier. It became draining emotionally, she said.

“You just want to know that feeling of what it is to fit in,” Whitmore said.

Unable to secure a baseball scholarship, she entered a softball recruiting showcase despite limited experience with the game. Her athleticism and her baseball instincts proved enough to attract a flood of offers from coaches who thought, within time, they could mold her into a star.

She used to recoil at the thought of switching to softball. “It just wasn’t what I wanted to do,” Whitmore said. “The high school softball team wanted me to play for them. To be honest, that’s like telling me to go play soccer. In my head, it’s a totally different sport.”

Yet college softball looked more appealing as Whitmore considered that the spotlight might not be so focused on her.

“I thought, if I go play on a team full of girls, I’ll know that feeling of not being the one everyone is always looking at or wanting to change,” Whitmore said. “When I stepped on a softball field, I was like, ‘OK, cool, I’m finally a part of them.’”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/12/sports/baseball/kelsie-whitmore-staten-island.html