Canadian pitcher, firefighter Alli Schroder to return to Sarasota for All-American Baseball Classic

SARASOTA — Both in her vocation and avocation, Alli Schroder puts out fires.

In only one can she get burned. Literally.

Chances are, most of the players competing later this month in the second annual All-American Women’s Baseball Classic at Ed Smith Stadium have a story to tell. Much like the 21-year-old herself, Schroder’s is unique.

“The baseball guys always want to know about the firefighting,” the resident of Fruitvale, British Columbia said, “and the firefighting guys always want to know about the baseball. It’s kind of a funny contrast that I live in, but it definitely attracts a lot of people.”

The baseball Alli Schroder first experienced her field of dreams at age 4. Her dad, who had never played baseball, served as his daughter’s bullpen catcher, until Alli’s fastball reached the upper 70’s and got the best of pop’s hands. Those endless hours throwing to her father paid off when Schroder extinguished the biggest diamond fire of her young life.

Throwing pitches and putting out fires

At the 2018 Women’s Baseball World Cup, the 16-year-old, pitching for the Canada women’s national team, closed the door on Team USA in the bronze-medal game. But off the diamond, Schroder puts out fires of a far more serious nature.

That’s the firefighting Alli Schroder, a unit crew member with the BC Wildfire Service. In the United States, they are known as hotshot crews. In Canada, unit crews, each with up to 20 firefighters, are deployed to a wildfire, usually for 14 days, when the initial attack crews require assistance. Thirty unit crews are spread across British Columbia.

“We fight wildland, urban-interface fires,” Schroder said. “Forest fires, and when they conflict with towns and communities, we fight them there. In BC, it’s a seasonal position, so I will fight fires from May to August. This year, it was from May to October.”

And while her mother is a logistics chief with the BC Wildfire Service, and twin sister Emma is a dispatcher, Alli initially wasn’t gung-ho to join them. “I come from a place,” she said, “where it’s like (at age 16), ‘Get a job.’ I enjoyed being outside and I kind of pondered first response and emergency response, and I met in the middle at forest fire fighting. And since I’ve started, I’ve fallen in love with it. It’s a great job. You get a real sense that you’re making a change. I can see it being a career.”

What may surprise some is that Alli works on a crew with five other women. “I would say the ratio is more men,” she said, “but there are a lot of girls who are getting into it now.” She loves her job, while at the same time “not knowing if you’re going to make it home, and treat each waking moment like that.

“You’re out in the back country most of the time, and there are a number of other things, other than an actual fire, that can kill you out here. Animals, wildlife, trees fall down on their own all the time, and it’s tough to navigate.”

In one sense, the pressure of fighting a fire has helped Schroder deal with the pressure of standing on the mound in the eighth inning, no outs, and the bases loaded. Before, allowing a hit in that situation would have eaten at her for days. “Suddenly I’m down on myself and the game is falling apart,” she said. “But now, with my few years of experience fighting wildfires, I kind of come into a big game and I’m stoked about it. And if one mistake happens, I’m like, ‘Whatever. It’s a game and I’m having fun.’ There is not as much at stake on the baseball field as there is on the fire line.”

Both are dominated by males, firefighting and baseball, and Alli Shroder has carved out spaces for herself in both. The latter simply because she could play the game. All the way back to her Little League team, on which she was the only girl.

“I have to say that I’ve never been cut from a team,” Shroder said, “which is a pretty good thing to be able to say.” From tee-ball to Little League to Babe Ruth to American Legion, on teams with all guys, Schroder more than held her own, and for that, her teammates embraced her.

'If I pitched against them, it would be an issue'

That doesn’t apply to the boys she struck out. Or the parents of those boys. “There were certain teams,” she said, “that I knew if I pitched against them, it would be an issue. Parents didn’t like that their little boys were being struck out. The little boys didn’t like that I was striking them out. I was super fortunate that at least the boys and coaches who were on my side, always supported me and they were always there to back me up with that.”

Realizing she would never be as strong as her male opponents, Alli the pitcher focused on mechanics. To watch just her arm deliver a pitch, it resembles, in every way, the motion of a male hurler. It’s how, despite standing 5-foot-5 and weighing 140 pounds, Schroder is able to throw a baseball in the low 80’s. “I was very small in Little League,” she said. “Always something that was huge for me was mechanics. And anything I could do to be more mechanically sound than the guys, and, at the end of the day, building on muscle memory.”

Schroder wanted to focus so strongly on baseball pitching, she never considered switching to softball. In fact, she never played it. “I was always super keen on baseball,” she said, “and pitching was something I wanted to develop. And I think that might be where my resistance to playing softball came from. If I would have transferred to softball, I would have lost that.”

Alli Schroder will have one more one-up on all the other players participating in the Classic. A couple of years ago, her American Legion coach called the baseball coach at Vancouver Island University of the Canadian College Baseball Conference (CCBC), the only college baseball program in Western Canada.

AMC: “Looks like we have a player. Real good slider. Throws in the low 80’s. VIU: “We want him.” AMC: “By the way, she’s a girl.” Said Schroder, “He didn’t think twice about it. I had some really good outings. I guess I was able to hold my own.” She became, and to this day remains, the only woman to play in the CCBC.

Her college career over, Alli Schroder will focus on her Canada women’s national baseball team, but before that, the second annual All American Women’s Baseball Classic. For the first one, she said she did “quite well” and was a player on the Rockford Peaches, the champions of the tournament.

“You can’t really ask for much more,” said the douser of fires, on the mound and elsewhere.

(For ticket information, clinic times, or any other information, visit americangirlsbaseball.org.)

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Firefighter, pitcher Alli Schroder to play in All-American Classic