St. Mark's Eighth Grader Stands Out Among Twin Cities All-Stars

When the Twin Cities Junior All-Stars arrived at Treasure Island Field for Tuesday’s District 3 Tournament baseball game, some of the players from the San Francisco American team stopped their warmups and began pointing at one of the visiting players.

Yes, it’s true. The Twin Cities second baseman, the team’s leadoff hitter, looks a little different than the rest of the players on the team. And with good reason.

She’s a girl.

Larkspur’s Sarah Ihnken is no ordinary girl, mind you. She’s an All-Star who – as she demonstrated by getting on base four times Tuesday night – is holding her own against the top 13- and 14-year-old boys in a sport girls aren’t supposed to be playing.

So why is she playing baseball?

“For one thing, she's capable,” noted Steve Stewart, the Twin Cities manager. “Some girls are great softball players, but they can't hang with the guys. Not her. She’s one of our best players.

“She very fast and she’s a great hitter. She got hit by pitches more than anyone this season and it didn’t faze her. She’d just steal second and third. She could run track if she weren’t playing baseball.”

In fact, Ihnken, an eight-grader at St. Mark’s School in San Rafael, does do track. She recently set a school long jump record, soaring 15 feet, 4 inches.

And she also does quite well in volleyball and basketball in the St. Patrick CYO program.

She just doesn’t play softball.

“She won’t play softball,” explained her mom, Vicki Figone. “I’ve tried to discuss it with her. I think she could get a nice softball scholarship. But she has no desire to play softball. She’s just not into it.

“I think it was the fact that her older sister played a couple of years of softball and she (Sarah) never enjoyed watching the games. I took her to a couple of baseball games because my boyfriend at the time had boys playing Little League, and she enjoyed it.”

Sarah has played baseball every year except one since joining Little League at age 6. She credits good coaching – and a competitive spirit – for her successful run in the sport.

“I’ve always been a tomboy,” she admitted. “I like being around guys.

“I’m a little tough, so I like the competition...It’s just more of a tough game.”

Speaking of tough, Ihnken shook off getting hit by a pitch Tuesday. It was nothing new. She’d gotten beaned three times in a game on two separate occasions during the Twin Cities season.

“Her on-base percentage is amazing,” Figone said after watching her daughter double, walk twice and get hit once in five plate appearances Tuesday. “She either walks or gets hit by the ball a lot.

“What I think happens is the pitcher’s thinking: ‘I’m not going to let this girl get a hit off me.’ So he tries extra-hard and becomes erratic. And then, if she gets a hit off him, he tries even harder next time and becomes even more erratic.”

Ihnken doesn’t think the beanings are intentional. In fact, she says the boys have gotten more and more respectful as she’s advanced up the Little League ranks.

“It has been a very positive experience,” she said of baseball in general. “As I get older, it gets much easier. Boys get more mature and they are friendlier to me. They include me more.”

Tyler Peck became her teammate this season for the first time on the A’s of the Twin Cities league. It didn’t take him long to develop a favorable impression.

“At the beginning of the year, I didn’t know what to expect,” the fellow All-Star admitted. “But I’ve been really impressed. She’s a great teammate.”

Ihnken has gotten so good and so comfortable in the sport, she plans on trying out for the high school team next season. Oh, not just any high school team. The Marin Catholic team, which at the varsity level won the North Coast Section championship this past season.

Her goal: More than just making the freshman team.

“I feel like as a girl, I wouldn’t want to try out and sit on the bench,” she explained. “I would want to be one of the starters on the team.”

That attitude has helped her develop into one of the top Junior Division players in the Twin Cities program. Heck, in all of District 3.

“I feel there is pressure because I want to be one of the better players,” she said. “It’s hard to explain. I feel I have to be one of the better players because I am a girl.”

Ihnken, who stands 5-foot-5, plans to play volleyball at Marin Catholic in the fall and perhaps basketball in the winter. But definitely not softball in the spring.

“I love baseball so much, I don’t think I could replace it. I would try to stick around baseball,” she pondered when asked what she’d do if she didn’t make the Marin Catholic team. “If I didn’t play baseball, I’d probably move to track over softball.”

Ihnken says she hasn’t seen any other girl in the Junior Division this season. She knows of a girl who has played football at Marin Catholic, but once again expects to be the only one trying out for the baseball team.

“That would be pretty awesome,” she said of possibly making the baseball team.

Figone wouldn’t be surprised if she were successful.

“Me, personally, I don’t know how she does it. I don’t know how she puts up with the pressure,” she said. “But she does.”