She grew up playing baseball. At this NC high school, she found a home on the team
Meredith McFadden turned the question around.
She was asked what made her choose to play baseball at Olympic High, rather than compete as a member of the girls’ softball team.
“Why would I not want to play baseball?” McFadden, a catcher and infielder at Olympic, asked in return.
“This is the sport I grew up playing,” she said. “This is the language I know.”
McFadden, a senior, is part of a rebirth of baseball at Olympic under head coach Tommy Small.
With a strong feeder system through the Pineville Little League program, Olympic was a baseball power until about a decade ago. Small, former head coach at Mount Pleasant High, came to Olympic in 2019.
The Trojans got off to a big start this season, winning their first seven games. They have tailed off a bit in the last few weeks, encountering SoMeck 7 4A powers Ardrey Kell and Providence, but they take an 8-5 record into their regular-season finale Thursday at home against Ardrey Kell. And they retain an outside shot of gaining a 4A playoff berth later this month; the field is announced Saturday.
A big part of the surge, Small says, is due to a core group of players who came up through the Steele Creek and Pineville youth baseball programs.
McFadden was part of that group.
“I grew up with most of the guys on this team,” she said. “My older brother (Colin) played baseball, and I went to all the practices. I liked the game, and that’s what I played. I’ve always played baseball.”
