Ella Bruning just wants to blend in, to be—in her words—“one of the guys.” As the only girl to compete at this year’s Little League World Series, however, she can’t help but stand out.
Bruning, the starting catcher for the Wylie Little League team from Abilene, Texas, has become one of the tournament’s breakout stars. But her newfound celebrity has more to do with her play than with her gender. Bruning, 12, has shined both at home plate and behind it for her team, otherwise known as “Ella and the Fellas.”
“We came up with that name when I was on the 10-year-old All-Star team,” says Bruning, flashing a smile that reveals both a mouth full of braces and her self-effacing sense of humor. “My teammates thought it was funny. But they don’t treat me any differently on the field.”
Bruning is the 20th girl ever to play in the Little League World Series, youth sports’ brightest stage. And only two other girls have done what Bruning did in her team’s opening game in Williamsport: collect multiple hits in an LLWS game. Bruning scored the first run in Texas’s 6–0 win over Washington after roping a single to left field in the fifth inning and then stealing two bases. She added an RBI on her team-high second hit, a line drive to right field that put Texas up 6–0 in the sixth inning.
Baseball is a family affair for the Brunings. Ella wears No. 8 in honor of her mom, Lindi, who was a star softball pitcher for Wylie High School. Her dad, Bryan, is one of her coaches. Her younger brother, Dillon, is an outfielder and second baseman for the team.
“I grew up watching my older brother, Collin, play All-Stars for Wylie,” says Bruning, who often shagged balls in the outfield for her big brother’s team. “I made a couple of good catches and someone said that I should play for his team. It started as a joke, but then my parents signed me up. I started playing, then I made the All-Star team—and now we’re here.”
Bruning caught every inning of her team’s first three games in Williamsport, blocking more than 25 pitches in the dirt and routinely sprinting down the line to back up plays at first base. After taking a foul ball off her left knee during a 6–5 loss to Michigan on Monday, Bruning was tended to by a trainer but asked to stay in the game—and promptly made diving blocks on the next three pitches she saw.
That toughness has earned her fans in Williamsport and beyond, wowing everyone from Chicago Cubs catcher Willson Contreras to former New York Yankees great Jorge Posada to softball legend Jennie Finch, who even sent Bruning a video message before she left for Williamsport.
“She told me that I did a great job of representing women,” says Bruning. “And she told me to go kick butt at the World Series.”
Other members of the select LLWS sorority Bruning has joined are rooting for her, too. Mo’ne Davis, who made history in 2014 as the first girl to pitch a shutout and win a game, returned to the Series this year as an in-game analyst for ESPN’s . On Tuesday, Davis threw out the ceremonial first pitch to Bruning—teaming up to form a battery with serious girl power.
“It’s cool to see her doing such great things,” says Davis, who now studies journalism and plays softball at Hampton University. “I'm cheering for her and hoping that she makes it a fun tournament, and really hoping that she enjoys it, because it’s such a fun experience.”
Bruning is also only the second girl to start at catcher—widely considered the most demanding position on the field—in the LLWS. The first, Krissy Wendell, backstopped the Brooklyn Park (Minn.) American Little League team in 1994. Like Bruning, Wendell (now Wendell-Pohl) followed her older brother into baseball.
“My brother was a pitcher, so I was his catcher,” says Wendell-Pohl. “I enjoyed being a catcher because I was always part of the action. And if I made a mistake, I didn’t have to wait 10 batters for the ball to come to me again. I liked being involved in every play.”
Bryn Stonehouse, a Texas native who played in the LLWS as an infielder for Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in 2009, now lives and works in Abilene. After watching the hometown team advance through the Southwest Regional tournament, Stonehouse reached out to Bruning’s parents to congratulate them, and to offer her support and advice to Bruning herself.
“At 13, I didn’t quite recognize the significance of being one of the few girls to play in the Little League World Series, or how awesome it was to represent girls in this sport,” says Stonehouse, who still hears from other young women who aspire to follow in her footsteps and play baseball. “But I do now.”