These days, women are breaking barriers all across the baseball landscape, from the professional coaching ranks to the college game and beyond. That pioneering spirit came together last weekend at Baseball for All’s Women’s College Club Baseball Championship, where the University of Washington claimed its second straight national title at the MLB Youth Academy in Compton, Calif.

The Huskies went undefeated over three games to come out atop the three-team field, which included UC Berkeley and Montclair State University from New Jersey. Washington also went undefeated to claim the trophy in the inaugural tournament in 2022.

“We need someone to come in and challenge them,” said Baseball for All Founder Justine Siegal.

That might soon happen. In addition to the three participating teams and Occidental College, which participated in 2022, eight other schools recently received club status or are recruiting and training with an eye toward receiving that status. Siegal’s long-term goal is to get women’s baseball accepted as an NCAA or NAIA sport. The immediate goal is to keep expanding the tournament, which fittingly takes place during Women’s History Month.

“I'm really excited about where we're going to be,” Siegal said. “Right now, we're very much in the process of building. But I know that with time and effort, you just keep going, that we will have viable club programs all around the country.”

Just look at the power Washington brought to the tournament. Among the highlights:    

• Senior Lindsay Tsujikawa started two games -- including the championship tilt -- and recorded a 0.00 ERA.
• Cleanup hitter Kyler Tsukada hit .667 and knocked two inside-the-park home runs.
• Rachel Bigelis hit a perfect 1.000 over three games.
• Over the course of the three-day tournament, Washington racked up 81 runs.

Before the event debuted in 2022, it had been more than 100 years since women's college baseball teams had last played each other, after several teams had emerged out of the women’s suffrage movement in the mid-19th century. Baseball For All provides both a structure for the independent teams to compete against each other and year-round mentorship for the clubs, which are all entirely student-run.

“What we're doing is groundbreaking,” Siegal said. “We are the pioneers of tomorrow, really. These students are making it happen.”

Spearheading the effort is Siegal, who was the first woman to coach professional men’s baseball (Brockton Rox, 2009) and the first to coach for an MLB organization (Oakland A’s, '15) in addition to founding Baseball for All. Her jersey is on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., to mark her place in history.

“As much as I love baseball, and as many amazing times I've had playing the game, I've had a lot of tough moments,” Siegal said. “And for me, that's motivated my desire to make it an easier path for those girls who are behind me. That's why I started Baseball For All, and now we have a college club program. I was always tired of waiting for opportunities, so I decided to create them. We have a whole community helping make these things possible.”

At this year’s championship, the scope and strength of that community was plain to see. Before tournament play moved to MLB’s Youth Academy in Compton, the teams were hosted at the Los Angeles Dodgers Academy in Redondo Beach for a welcome event featuring special speaker Kelsie Whitmore, who last summer became the first woman to play affiliated professional baseball.

The tournament’s ceremonial first ball was thrown out by longtime women's baseball ambassador Maybelle Blair, who played in the original All-American Girls Professional Baseball League back in 1948. That’s the league that ran from 1943-54 and inspired the classic movie “A League of Their Own.”

Now another is forming. Siegal said she hopes to have an eight-team league, in which club teams can compete against one another prior to the championship, up and running by next year. Given its tournament success so far, Washington certainly seems like the preseason favorite.

“What’s most exciting is the smiles, the sliding into home and just the knowledge that these students know that they’re paving the way for those who are coming along,” Siegal said. “I know the women’s club baseball program is going to be a success, and girls who are 12 are going to say, 'I can keep playing. I don’t have to quit. I can keep going.'”