Williamsport, PA – As Needville Little League made World Series history as the first team from a small Fort Bend County town to play on Little League’s biggest field, Sugar Land’s Traci Duez did the same.
“I love walking up to a field and loving the first time…and hearing them say, ‘Oh, we have a girl umpire’,” Duez said.
He became an umpire 20 years ago, shortly after moving to Sugar Land. It happened by accident, he said, because of a conversation with a colleague who was using the photocopier to print Little League materials.
Duez was recognized on the field at Lamade Stadium on Thursday afternoon with the all-male Little League World Series umpires.
She is the only woman to call balls and strikes this year in Williamsport, and she is the first woman from the Southwest Region to be an umpire in the Little League World Series.
“I love baseball. I love umpiring. I love what I do,” said Duez.
She said she was told by Little League officials that she was only the eighth woman in history to become a World Series umpire.
“We are trying to get more women involved in sports, into Little League, from players to coaches to managers and now to umpires,” said Southwest Region Director Blaine Whitmire. “He has earned a lot of respect among the other umpires here. It doesn’t really matter what his gender is because he is very good at his craft.”
Duez, who has a degree in chemistry and previously worked in IT, now runs a leadership development company.
He dreamed of being an umpire in Williamsport for more than a decade.
“It helped me become a better person, a better leader, a better person. You learn things like courage and practice resilience and determination,” he said. “It’s more than I ever imagined, the experience of actually being here…umpiring in front of 20,000 people. It’s unbelievable.”
The pressure never stops him, he said, because it’s all about baseball. She hopes she can inspire other women to take up the swing.
It is not yet clear if Duez will be the umpire for Needville’s US Championship game this Saturday.
The team has a day off Thursday. After a quick practice, they were able to spend time with their families at a hotel in a neighboring town, where hotel staff and local businesses coordinated a celebration of the team’s hard-fought victory against in Seattle on Wednesday night.
The original plans were shelved, that’s when the local community put the party together quickly and at the last minute. Families enjoy dinner, dessert, games, and more baseball on the big screen.
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