Australia’s baseball prodigy has a fastball that could take her to the major league

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. If she makes it in the US, Beacom would be as much of a trailblazer as she is in her home country. The only other Australian female to have played collegiately in the US is Queenslander Luisa Gauci.

Beacom says playing college ball is the “next logical step” in her convention-busting career.

She was the first girl to represent Australia at the Cal Ripken World Series in the US at just 12, the first to represent Victoria at Under-16 level and the first to pitch in division one baseball in Victoria before she took to the mound for the Melbourne Aces in the Australian Baseball League’s Melbourne Challenge in January 2022.

After her time with Tread coaches, who shared vision of her on social media, the quietly spoken teenager has “had a bunch of coaches reach out already”.

“I’m trying to find the one; a college where I not