Folks figured the California State University, San Marcos baseball and softball coaches were kidding when they started discussing the idea of Jillian Albayati playing for both teams.
Jose Garcia and Stef Ewing were completely serious. So when the short-handed Cougars baseball team needed a pitcher at the weekend, everybody knew Albayati could handle the job.
She is a reliable right-handed pitcher in baseball and plays third base for softball.
“We’ve got an arm, and we’ve got a legit arm,” Ewing said on Monday.
Albayati became just the second player in US collegiate history and first in Division II to appear in formal baseball and softball games the same day when she pitched the final inning in the opener of a doubleheader against Sonoma State.
“It’s a great story and there really is an opportunity for Jill to go again for them with the health of the pitching staff,” Ewing said.
Fortunately with the school’s baseball and softball fields only about a football field apart, Albayati was able to play softball for the Cougars in the morning before she switched gears — and gear — for some baseball next door. Cal State San Marcos posted side-by-side photographs of her on social media from both games.
“It was so awesome,” she told NBC San Diego. “It just felt like where I needed to be at that moment, it felt pretty amazing.”
Thanks to California’s rainy spring “putting wrinkles in the schedule,” as Ewing described it, the first-place baseball team had two nine-inning games on Saturday followed by one nine-inning contest and a seven-inning second game on Sunday.
When Ewing received word “baseball needs Jill right now,” Albayati changed uniforms “and took off running with cleats and her glove.”
Albayati’s softball teammates scurried to the baseball field to watch and cheer her on.
“You could just hear the roars of people when they announced Jill and she took the field,” Ewing said. “What’s great about it is there was never a doubt in my mind Jill could do it.”
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