Whiz Kid of the Week: Larissa Wormsby

Name: Larissa Wormsby

Age: 16

Grade: 11th

School: Institute for Collaborative Education

Accomplishment:  Larissa plays on several boys baseball and basketball teams.

When Larissa Wormsby went to try out for the 78th Precinct boys baseball team they told her that the softball tryouts were the next day.

But she refused to leave.

“I was pretty adamant about playing baseball, it was either that or nothing,” she said.

Asked why, she said, “I felt like there was a challenge in baseball that there wasn’t there in softball. I had this glimmer of hope that I would be one of the first female baseball players professionally.”

Larissa, who lives on Vanderbilt Avenue near St. Marks Place and works part time at , managed to get on the team, and the next year decided to play boys basketball as well, fighting her way onto both the 78th precinct and her high school boys teams. In addition, she plays on her school’s boys baseball team and is captain of her high school’s girl’s basketball team.

 Despite her gains, she said the experience of playing on boys teams has taught her that sexism still exists.

“It’s very much there,” she said. “A lot of people say, ‘Oh I’m not sexist, I don’t discriminate. But a lot of times people don’t realize that they do it. There are a bunch of little things that people do.”

For example, she said, “Over the summer I went to look at colleges, and they said they don’t let girls play on the (baseball) teams.”

And when she first approached her school’s boys baseball coach about tryouts, “he kind of laughed it off. But then when I tried out, he said he was sorry,” she said.

But the majority of the time, Larissa says she is welcomed, respected and made to feel a part of all the teams she’s on.

When she first showed up for boys basketball practice, she said, “I remember when I walked into the gym, I was nervous. But some of the guys walked up to me and started talking to me,” she said.

 “We all feel like we’re a little family,” said Mana King, her basketball coach for the boys’ 78th Precinct team.

“She’s a well liked person," he said. "She’s funny, she’s smart, she’s always there she never misses a practice."

“At tryouts I was impressed by her,” he added. “I just really liked her intensity. She brought it every play. This girl takes elbows to the face, She was getting knocked down, but she gets right back up and doesn’t complain.”

Key to awesomeness: According to Larissa, “I think most of it was just trying to prove to everybody and trying to prove to myself that I can do it. No matter what I can say that I can always be the best that I can be. I also wanted to prove that it’s not only a guys sport. That girls can play it too if they put their minds to it.”

According to her mother, Mary Quandt, "She makes up her mind and then she goes forward," she said, adding, "I give her kudos for knowing what she wants and standing up for it."

And Coach King adds that the support of her parents also makes a difference. “Both her parents are there every game, cheering her on,” he said.

Know a Prospect Heights whiz kid we should feature? E-mail amy.clark@patch.com.