A n Australian baseball prodigy believed to be the fastest female pitcher on the planet is fielding interest from US colleges and quietly dreaming of becoming the first woman to pitch in Major League Baseball.
Genevieve Beacom, 18, a left-hand pitcher with a 138kph fastball and mean curveball, who last year became the first female to play for a professional team in Australia, has just returned home to Victoria after a three-month stint at Tread Athletics, a private US-based baseball development facility.
At Tread in North Carolina, Beacom worked on her velocity and pitching mechanics, built muscle and studied nutrition, all to get faster, fiercer and land a junior college offer that would see her study and play in the US for two years.
In baseball, the genders are allowed to compete against each other but rarely do, meaning she has played almost exclusively against males since she was nine years old.