No one has any trouble telling the March twins apart on the ball diamond. One twin, tall and leggy, plays first base and pitches while the other, already barrel-chested at 12, catches.
Both play for South Vancouver but the first baseman, Emma March, is one-of-a-kind on her all-star team as the only girl.
“The boys treat me like one of them and they respect me because I’m good,” she said Monday after South Van beat Little Mountain in a round-robin game at the provincial tournament. She went one for three and the plate and scored in a 9-3 win.
“When I started in Minors, they put me in first base and I’m a girl so I can stretch for the ball and they saw that. It became my primary position. What I love most is when it’s a tight play and you know that the throw needs to reach me fast, and I stretch as far as I can to reach the ball. I love it.”
Emma is one of two girls at the B.C. Little League Championship, on this week in Walnut Grove, and she hopes the other female all-star, Alli Schroder from Trail, will join the provincial selects girls baseball team. Emma plays for the peewee team, which travels and competes against boys.
The March siblings will go into Grade 7 next year at Corpus Christi elementary and are not the only twins on the South Van all-star team. Matthew and Daniel Suarez both play second and third base and both batted .167 against Little Mountain.
“With Evan and Emma, they have a good connection,” said manager Brian Perry. “It took me a year or so to tell [Daniel and Matthew] apart.”
Emma, who wears bright nail polish for big games, said anyone who has teased her for getting additional attention for playing among boys soon sees only what matters most.
“In the beginning of the season, they’d make fun of me, like, ‘There’s a boy staring at you, Emma, you have an admirer.’ They’d tease me,” she said, knowing the ribbing was mostly friendly banter.
“But after I hit two home runs in Districts, they stopped.”
