Monday, August 17, 2026

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A Native girls softball team made history this summer, winning a Babe Ruth Softball World Series championship during its first year competing in the tournament.

Na7ive Na7ions brought together Native athletes from different tribal communities to compete in Florence, Ala., but founder and former Major League Baseball pitcher D.J. Carrasco says their success was not only about what happened on the field.

They were also battling the summer heat.

Temperatures hovered in the 90s, with high humidity making conditions even tougher, but inside the Na7ive Na7ions dugout, there was something you might not normally associate with championship softball: Watermelon. Grapes. Oranges. Pickles. And a team favorite: frozen pickle juice, or “pickle pops”.

Autumn Lopez is a holistic nutritional therapy practitioner and co-founder of Na7ive Na7ions.

“We feed them from the moment they start swinging the bat, warming up through the entire game. And at first it was hard for them, and they didn’t really understand, but they adapted really fast to eating during the game.”

Lopez says the approach was intentional.

Carrasco pitched professionally, including ten seasons in Major League Baseball, while Lopez has a background in massage therapy and nutrition.

Lopez says the goal is to develop the whole athlete, not just what happens between the lines.

And in Alabama, she believes it made a difference.

“We were probably one of the only teams, if not the only team, who didn’t suffer heat exhaustion, nausea, throwing up. Every time you looked around, there was a coach throwing up… We didn’t have one girl go down, so that was huge.”

Lopez says she repeatedly reminded the girls that winning required more than playing good softball.

They also had to stay healthy enough to keep playing.

Carrasco says the tournament tested them against some formidable competition, including Puerto Rico.

He says the experience also gave the girls a chance to represent Native people and their individual cultures on an international stage.

“They’re literally ambassadors. They’re truly ambassadors of their tribe and their cultures.”

Lopez says other teams began noticing what looked like a buffet inside the Na7ive Na7ions dugout.

And eventually, what started as the team’s own nutrition strategy spread beyond it.

Before another game against Puerto Rico, Lopez had extra bananas.

“I thought, do I share my secret weapon?… So I grabbed those bananas and I took them over to Puerto Rico… and I said, hey, I have some bananas for you, for your team.”

She also handed out electrolytes to umpires and other teams.

For Lopez, that reflected something bigger than winning.

(Courtesy Native Nations Sport / Facebook)

Na7ive Na7ions wants young athletes to leave the program understanding how to care for themselves long after the final out.

And the girls left Alabama with something else: a championship.

Lopez says watching the final out was emotional after four years of building the organization, but her thoughts quickly turned toward what the victory could mean for the Native girls coming behind them.

“When I saw the girls go out there, that last pitch was thrown, that last hit was hit, that last catch was caught, and they realized they won, I just thought they have just changed the trajectory for so many generations of young girls underneath them.”

It was the first year Na7ive Na7ions fielded a girls softball team at the Babe Ruth World Series.

Carrasco and Lopez says interest in the program has surged since the victory, with Native families asking how their children can participate.

For the girls who made history in Alabama, he says the magnitude of what they accomplished might not sink in for years, but eventually, he hopes they’ll be able to look back and say: “They started it.”

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Check out today’s Native America Calling episode