Special T-Ball Team Learns They Don't Need A League Of Their Own

WEST LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com)  —  At first glance, the Angels t-ball team looks like any other in the West Los Angeles Little League.

But CBS2's Krisine Lazar says if you look under these players' caps, you realize they're all girls.

"Edie, to the pitcher's mound," one of the coaches blares.

"We've had a lot of coaches come up to us an inning or two into the game and say, hey, wait, are there only all girls on this team?," said mom  Jessica Cowley. "It's certainly not something people notice off the start."

The Angels are the only all-girls team in the league.

"In all the teams we play, it's a sea of boys and one token girl," says another mom.

As a result, the Angels typically play mostly boys.

Doyin Richards has a daughter on the team and he's also the head coach.

"My first thought was, what am I getting myself into?," Richards says. "What can I teach these girls as far as competing against boys?"

And the girls don't want or expect special treatment.

"I was teaching this one young girl, Edie, how to swing a bat. And I say, okay sweetie, hold the bat and she looked at me dead in the eye and said, 'My name is Edie,' and I thought whoa.' We'll work on that."

He acknowledges the girls are teaching him, too.

"I get it. They're not sweeties, they're not honeys and these are little girls with names," says Richards.

And he says many of them are proving to be formidable opponents.

Lazar asked Richards' daughter if she ever got nervous going up against an all-boys team?

Emiko Richards, 5,  gave an emphatic "No."

Why not, Lazar said.

"Because we're fast. We can beat the boys," she said, matter-of-fact.

League rule, in  t-ball, you  don't keep score.

"I keep score internally," said Coach Richards, "and I think we've won a few games. And I love that."

For the parents, they say it's not about winning. It's about their daughters learning they don't need a league of their own.

" I think this team teaches them they can do anything the boys can do," says Coach Richards. "Oftentimes even better. To learn that at a young age? In a world where they learn boys rule the world, well, guess what? They learn girls are just as powerful if not more powerful than they are."

Lazar reports the Angels have created such a buzz in the community that there is now a wait-list to be on the team next season.