Olivia Bricker, a Clermont Northeastern High School graduate and trendsetter on the diamond, is vying for a professional baseball title this week.
Bricker plays in the Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL), which is the only professional women’s baseball league in the United States. The league’s debut season featured four teams – New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco – with all games at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois.
The league was co-founded by baseball pioneer Justine Siegal, the first woman to coach a professional men’s baseball team (Brockton Rox, Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball) and to pitch batting practice in Major League Baseball.
All four teams will take part in the league playoffs, which
begin Sept. 9 in Springfield. Each team played 15 games, five against the other three squads, to seed for the playoffs. Games are seven innings.
Bricker plays for the Boston Hunters, which had the worst record, 4-11. They begin their playoff series against first-place San Francisco (10-5). LA and New York meet in the other semifinal and are 8-7.
The semis are best-of-three series. Boston’s first game is 7 p.m. Sept. 9. Game 2 is 6 p.m. Sept. 11 and Game 3 would be 3 p.m. Sept. 13. The championship series is best-of-five and begins Sept. 16. All games will be broadcast on ESPN+ and highlights will be available on the league’s YouTube channel. Tickets to see the games in person are available here.
Bricker, a lefthander, pitched in six games, starting one, and had a 1-1 record and 9.63 ERA. She started the last game of the regular season, allowing three runs in three innings.
Bricker, 2019 CNE graduate, pitched three seasons for CNE’s baseball team, compiling three wins and two shutouts in 57 innings. Her senior year she had a 2.85 ERA in 19 innings and a 1-1 record, while also playing for the softball team, where she hit .524 with 12 extra-base hits in 42 at-bats but did not pitch.
She signed with Wright State to play softball out of high school. After playing briefly in 2020, she transferred to Bellarmine and had a standout four-year career, starting 164 games, mainly in the outfield.
Her father, Mike Bricker, owns Champions Baseball and Softball Academy on the East Side. Its website boasts an extensive list of alumni, including recent Cincinnati Reds pitcher Brent Suter. Reds players have volunteered as instructors at the academy over the years, including Barry Larkin, Tom Browning, Pete Rose, Adam Dunn, George Foster, Tucker Barnhart and Chris Welsh.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: CNE grad Olivia Bricker to pitch in pro baseball league playoffs
