Padgham's progress: Abbotsford pitcher gets it done for Team Canada
'It was a little nerve wracking only because it's such a big tournament and I'm only 18'
The progress of Raine Padgham's baseball career has always pointed toward the day when she would join the elite players of the world.
Still, being picked as the starting pitcher for Team Canada's opening game against Mexico at the Women's Baseball World Cup qualifier was a nod to the Abbotsford native's determined evolution from hard-throwing girl with the trademark pink hair to the even harder-throwing young woman out to prove her potential.
"It was a little nerve-wracking only because it's such a big tournament, and I'm only 18," she said, speaking from the tournament site of Thunder Bay. "I'm pretty new to the team, so just getting that start, it makes me feel a lot more confident in my own ability."
Padgham earned the win in the 9-1 final, allowing just one run on one hit over four innings. It was exactly the performance Team Canada manager Anthony Pluta expected from her.
"She came out and did exactly what we hoped she would do. She threw the ball well. She threw hard. She threw strikes. She located her off-speed pitches," he said. "It was a phenomenal performance."
WATCH | Raine Padghem felt nervous in her tournament debut:
The great expectations that often fall on a precocious talent can be the undoing of a young athlete. But Padgham has navigated the pressure and stayed the course.
At 13 years old, she was the youngest ever invited to join the Canadian women's prospects team. At 15, her fastball was clocked at 83 miles per hour (134 km/h) during a Baseball B.C. high-performance camp.
As coach Logan Wedgewood described at the time: "For most 15-year-olds — regardless of gender — throwing 83 is really fast."
The pandemic wreaked havoc on the international baseball calendar, so much so that the tournament in Thunder Bay is the first of its class the Canadian women have played since 2019. The team is currently ranked third in the world.
Padgham made her senior national team debut last year in a series against the U.S., but Thunder Bay is her first major international tournament. The pink hair is still there, just a little more understated than in the past.
"Whenever I want to grow it out, it just seems that people I know want it to be back," she said.
In the fall, she'll break another barrier at Thompson Rivers University as the first female ever recruited by the men's baseball team. Although no stranger to playing against boys, joining TRU will take it to the next level.
"It'll definitely be a big step, mainly because I'll be going in as a freshman, and I'm really playing against, like, fully grown men. So there's definitely going to be a big gap in terms of skill and overall competition. But I feel like it will only push me to be better so that I can compete and continue to grow," she said.
Unfortunately, varsity baseball programs for women are few and far between, meaning for the good players who can't make the jump to the men's game, the development pathway gets rocky once they reach university age.
"If there was the opportunity to have an all-girls collegiate program, I think there would be a lot more girls playing baseball, and we'd see an even bigger spike in the talent level," said Pluta.
Padgham doesn't know if she'll get another start at the World Cup qualifier. Canada still has games against Hong Kong, the U.S., South Korea and Australia.
Next month, six other nations will battle in a similar qualifying tournament in Japan. The top two finishers in each group, plus two wild cards, advance to the Women's Baseball World Cup Final in Thunder Bay next year. Canada, as host nation, gets an automatic berth.
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