Nolensville Little League has Stella Weaver, a gas-throwing girl pitcher like Mo'ne Davis

COLUMBIA — A pair of matching brown pigtails peeked out from under the back of a black baseball cap.

That was the only overtly noticeable difference about Stella Weaver as she stood in the visitors' dugout Saturday surrounded by her Nolensville Little League teammates during the first day of the Tennessee state tournament.

Arranged three in a row atop wooden bleachers a few feet behind that dugout, women wore Weaver's name and her number 26 on the backs of their matching black shirts. A few feet behind them, a man sat on a picnic table wearing the same black shirt with the same name and the same number, while a group of girls wearing "Weaver Fever" shirts wandered about the stands in front of him.

They all were there to watch Stella Weaver and her teammates continue the program's quest to advance to the Little League World Series for the third consecutive year. Nolensville fell one game short of playing in the championship game last year.

They all were there to watch the first girl in the history of the town's Little League, she of the fastball that's reached 68 mph, play ball.

"She's not just a girl," Nolensville coach Randy Huth said. "She can play."

'You just got struck out by a girl'

The only thing differentiating the shirts worn by the Weavers from the many others in the stands on this mid-July afternoon was the word on the front. Instead of "NoloBoys," theirs read, "NoloGirls."

Weaver didn't pitch Saturday. Her dream of reaching Williamsport, Pennsylvania, site of the Little League World Series, though, remained the same during her team's 5-1 victory. The soft-spoken 12-year-old's face lit up when she thought about being on the mound, where she has been known to strike out a player or two.

"Sometimes in my head I'm like, 'Oh, you just got struck out by a girl,' " she said.

A sheepish smile followed those words out of her mouth.

She wasn't boasting, but rather reminiscing. She does the same when she thinks about her other favorite place on a baseball field — the right-handed batter's box. There she's been known to hit a home run or two.

"We always joke about it because she strikes out a lot of people," Huth said. "But sometimes we say, 'You hit like a girl,' when (another player) hits a home run. We laugh about it."

Dressed for the occasion

Stella Weaver's affinity for the game began to show when she was in kindergarten and would go to school dressed in a full baseball uniform.

"Like, as a regular outfit," Weaver's mother Rachel said.

The choice in wardrobe left Weaver's older-by-two-years brother Henry "mortified." Henry soon got over it, Rachel said, and began playing ball in the family's backyard with his sister. Their bond has blossomed into them becoming "best friends" and each other's "biggest fan."

Stella looked up to her baseball-playing brother. Her time on the diamond began with T-ball. Softball soon followed for a stretch. She also played ice hockey "for a hot minute" and flag football with boys when she was younger. She counts soccer as her second love.

But baseball beckoned when she'd watch Henry play. When she'd sit next to her father and evaluate her brother's games as they unfolded, and talk about them some more during car rides home afterward.

So she switched back.

"She saw him pitching and she wanted to pitch," said Stella's father Matt Weaver, a soccer goalie in college. "She grew up going to baseball fields."

Initially, big brother had his concerns about the switch.

"He has his moments where he worries about how boys might be (toward her)," Rachel said. "But, again, he's been proven otherwise."

'Calm and ready to crush the ball'

So far, Stella said, fitting in hasn't been an issue. Teammates have treated her no differently — not in Little League, not in travel baseball, not anywhere.

"I don't talk a lot most of the time," she said. "They kind of talk while I'm standing there and I'll just listen. They just treat me the same (as anyone else)."

Stella doesn't have to do much talking. Her game on the field does that for her.

"Usually in the beginning of the game I'm super nervous," she said. "But during the rest of the game I'm so calm and ready to crush the ball."

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Huth addressed Stella's selection to the All-Star team of 11- and 12-year-olds on the first day of practice. He said if anyone was uncomfortable with her being on the team they should speak up.

Nobody spoke up.

"We're never going to have an issue with this," Huth said he told his team. "It's never going to be talked about again. We don't think about it. But we know it's a big story and we can't get away from that.

"Stella knows. The team knows. Look, she's going to get more attention than you guys sometimes, whether she does anything or not, because she's a girl. Get over it."

Said her father: "They've made her part of the fold. She's another player in the dugout. They've been very good with her."

Mo'ne, Mo'ne, Mo'ne

The sound echoed, leather baseball meeting leather catcher's mitt in a bullpen.

Stella Weaver was warming up during the bottom of the sixth inning of her team's win Saturday — in part in case of emergency and in part to prepare for whenever she might pitch next.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

The sound was reminiscent of another girl, Mo'ne Davis, who lived Weaver's dream in 2014 as a female pitcher throwing 70 in a Little League World Series game. She did so while crafting a shutout for her Philadelphia team against South Nashville Little League, the previous incarnation of the current Nolensville league, in that World Series.

"She's special," said Huth, who is aiming to become the first coach to lead a team to the Little League World Series three years in a row. "She doesn't just play baseball; she excels at it and she throws almost 70 mph. Mo'ne Davis is the last one to do that — in 2014. Think of how long it's been."

Part of the reason Stella has been able to succeed under unusual circumstances is her demeanor, her ability to "stay focused on the task," and not "let the highs get her too high," or the "lows get her too low," her dad said.

"That's part of her hardwiring," Matt Weaver said. "That's nothing that we really coached or taught. She just kind of figured it out on her own."

The youngest of four kids has done a lot of that during her life.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Stella Weaver: The Mo'ne Davis of 2023 Little League World Series