How did Nolensville's Stella Weaver reach 2023 Little League World Series? Start with a home run

SOUTH WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — Matt Weaver doesn't recall the name of the kid who handed him that baseball at that Antioch field on that March 26, 2022, afternoon.

He's pretty sure the boy was from Clarksville. He knows he had been preparing for a game that day when fate indirectly introduced him to Stella Weaver at Cane Ridge Park.

Weaver, then 11, stood in the right-handed batter's box. The youngest of Matt and Rachel Weaver's four children wore a black, hooded sweatshirt bearing the family's last name in red and white above the No. 26 on the back — her birthday is Feb. 6. On the front was her team's name: Franklin Chargers.

She had fouled off the first pitch. Watched the second go by.

"Strike two!" the plate umpire shouted.

"C'mon, kid," her father responded.

Part nerves, part instinct, part habit, Stella tapped the plate twice with her bat. She did the same on the dirt in the box with her right foot in a red New Balance cleat.

She swung again. The ball vanished over the left-field fence. Unable to utter many words in the moment, Matt Weaver yelled.

"Go!" just after she made contact. A pause. "Yeah!" after the ball went over the fence.

His daughter's teammates met her at home plate. Jumped up and down with her in celebration.

Matt Weaver jumped, too. The hunter he didn't know he had in him surfaced.

"I jumped out of my seat," he said. "Sprinted around the field to hunt the ball down."

It was Stella Weaver's first baseball home run. It was 17 months before she became the first girl ever to play for the Nolensville baseball all-star program, and the 22nd girl to play in the Little League World Series. She's part of the town's third consecutive visit to South Williamsport.

Oh, brother

Fourteen-year-old Henry Weaver has seen the replay more times than he can count. Stella has made sure of that.

Henry's eyes had been cemented to the GameChanger app on his cell phone moments earlier. He was sitting on a bench in a dugout at a field not too far away, watching a stream of his sister's game. Then pregame warmups beckoned. He had to put his phone away.

After warmups, Henry checked his messages.

"My dad texted me and he sends a video of Stella hitting her first home run," Henry said. "I found that pretty funny."

Funny because Henry, who had played Wiffle Ball with Stella in the cul-de-sac in front of the family's house in Virginia, who had inspired her to play baseball, who had caught her, pitched to her, encouraged her and argued with her, hit his first home run at the same field.

Funny that he had missed the moment by mere minutes.

"We've been best friends since . . . " he said, pausing, "forever."

"He gets on my nerves so much," Stella said with a smile. "It just annoys me."

Like brothers are supposed to annoy sisters. And vice versa.

But you're best friends, right?

"Yes," she said without a hint of hesitation.

"They just do everything together," said their older sister, Olivia, who just began her junior year at Independence High School. "They were always each other's person."

Probably always will be.

More brothers ... at 2023 Little League World Series

Stella Weaver has 11 more siblings now, all brothers. At least that's how Matt Weaver sees it.

Jace Barney, Turner Blalock, Nash Carter, Corbin Cyphers, Carter Gomillion, Grayson May, Lucas McCauley, Kale McCarty, Ty McKenzie, Gideon Shepler and Jackson Tabor are their names. They're her Nolensville All-Star teammates. They're her friends. They're the ones who 40, 50 years from now, she'll still remember.

They're the ones who helped Nolensville defeat Rainbow City, Alabama, in the Southeast Region, near where Stella's mother grew up. They're the ones who watch out for Stella on one hand and look up to her on the other.

"Not many teams have had a girl on their team," said Grayson May, who earned the victory on the mound in the region final.

Stella Weaver can hold her own there, too. Her pitches have been clocked at 68 mph, one of the fastest on the team. She strikes out boys. She hits home runs off boys.

She feels like she fits in with the boys — most of the time.

"The boys do their stuff and I'm kind of off to the side sometimes," Stella said earlier this week before the World Series began. "I try to get as close as I can to them. Sometimes I feel like one of them. Sometimes I feel like the only girl. I'm kind of used to that, though."

Know pain, know gain

Rachel Weaver was trying to save a Fathead's life when Mother Nature betrayed her, sending the oversized sign toward her head instead.

A violent storm had just blown into Warner Robins, Georgia, winds wicked and rain raging. It caused a four-hour delay to the start of the Southeast Region championship game against Florida.

It caused pain. Stella Weaver's mother reached out for the flailing Fathead. Fate had other ideas, and it hit her square in the face.

"I don't know if you heard about this," she said with a smile afterward, pointing to her cuts. "I'm fine. Totally worth it."

The scene was symbolic. It spoke to why her youngest child, her 12-year-old daughter who had made a game-saving catch in left field earlier that night, was so willing and able to play ice hockey with the boys, play baseball with the boys — and still wear pigtails twisted by one of her sisters all the while.

"They're thick as thieves," Rachel said of her children. "From since she was little, she's just had this knack, gravitated to whatever she enjoys doing.

"She's never looked at it as a gender thing. The softball league she was in, everybody wore shorts and she was like, 'I'm wearing baseball pants.' She would actually dress up in a baseball uniform to go to kindergarten, like as a regular outfit."

Ryne Sandberg wanted to meet Stella Weaver at 2023 LLWS

A man who retired from Major League Baseball 14 years before Stella Weaver was born, a man whose achievements earned him induction into the Hall of Fame, wanted to meet her.

So Stella Weaver shook Ryne Sandberg's hand, and him hers, on a gray Monday afternoon in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

Sandberg, the former Chicago Cubs second baseman, was the grand marshal of the annual World Series Grand Slam parade. Stella Weaver was about to become the 22nd girl to appear in the 76-year history of the Little League World Series.

Each flashed a smile as their right hands met.

THEIR STORY: 'We just made history': How Nolensville celebrated 'impossible' Little League World Series berth

HISTORY: Next stop for Stella Weaver, Nolensville Little League fellas: Little League World Series

GIRL JUST WANTS TO HAVE FUN: Nolensville Little League has its own Mo'ne Davis. A gas-throwing girl named Stella Weaver

"Pretty cool getting to meet Ryne Sandberg today," a post appeared on her Instagram page, which was started and is maintained by her father, with help from the family.

The meeting occurred barely a week after Weaver's sports hero, Mo'ne Davis, sent her a personal shout-out message before the Southeast Region final

"Keep pounding the zone, keep hitting those corners and always trust your teammates," Davis said.

"That's cool," Weaver responded to nobody in particular after watching the video.

Her reaction was understated but genuine, true to who Stella Weaver is.

"She's very mellow," her sister Olivia said. "She's always been quiet."

And athletic.

'2 years old and has a six-pack'

Stella Weaver's DNA is littered with sports.

Matt was a soccer goalie at Lafayette College, an engineering school in Easton, Pennsylvania. Matt's father, Ray Weaver, was a quarterback at Holy Cross. Her aunt Elaine was captain of the basketball team at John Carroll University, just outside Cleveland. Her uncle Russ was a receiver/tight end for Maryland. Uncle Alex was a volleyball player for Penn State.

As he had with his previous three children, Matt Weaver swaddled Stella in a Pittsburgh Steelers "Terrible Towel" when she was an infant. It was an ode to his time growing up in the suburb of Monroeville, a hair over 16 miles east of Pittsburgh.

"She was athletic coming out of the womb," Stella's oldest sister, Caroline, said. "I remember looking at beach pictures when she's like 2 years old and has a six-pack.

"She used to watch this gymnastics movie on repeat. I think she learned all their routines. So strong it's crazy."

Stella tried gymnastics once.

"Hated it," she said. "I was like, 'OK, I'm switching to a different sport.' "

Ice hockey, soccer, softball and baseball followed.

Soccer and baseball stuck.

On to Tennessee

The Weavers moved to Tennessee from Virginia three years ago. They wanted their children in schools where COVID restrictions weren't as strict. They had family in Franklin.

They wanted to move on to the next chapter in their lives.

Matt has a degree in civil engineering and oversees road construction projects. Rachel has a biology degree and a master's degree in public health.

The two met through mutual friends at a bar in Richmond, Virginia, about a block and a half from Matt's apartment. Matt was in town for work. Rachel was in town going to school.

"My employer said, 'Do you want to go down to Richmond?' " Matt said. "I said, 'What if I don't?' They said, 'You can find a new job.' I said, 'Richmond sounds great.' "

All of that came full circle during the Southeast Region tournament. There, Nolensville eliminated a team from Vienna, Virginia, where Stella's uncle Russ lives.

Now it's on to the Little League World Series for the Weavers. All three of Stella's siblings plan to be there.

Oh, and about 150 friends and family from the Pittsburgh area, where Matt grew up.

All to watch "Stella and the Fellas" play baseball on the biggest of stages.

"She'll play baseball until she either doesn't or when biology wins," Matt Weaver said. "We know that's quickly approaching."

Before that happens, though, the Weavers have at least a couple more games to watch.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Stella Weaver 2023 Little League World Series: Girl pitcher mashes HRs