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Red Sox hire first Black woman coach in professional baseball

Bianca Smith, 29, will coach a minor league team and joins the club with experience in collegiate baseball.
Credit: Carroll University

The Red Sox have hired Bianca Smith as a minor league coach making her the first Black woman to coach professional baseball.

“The opportunity is amazing,” Smith said in an interview on the MLB Network. “I’m still wrapping my head around it. I probably won’t really have it sink in until I’m actually there.

"I think it’s a great opportunity also to kind of inspire other women who are interested in this game. This is not really something I thought about it when I was younger. I kind of fell into it being an athlete. So I’m excited to get that chance to show what I can do.”

The 29-year-old currently serves as the assistant coach and hitting coordinator at Carrol University in Wisconsin. Before starting in that role in 2018, Smith worked as an assistant coach at the University of Dallas and spent four years as the director of baseball operations at Case Western Reserve University.

Smith played Softball at Dartmouth College and graduated in 2012. 

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According to MLB.com, she will start in her new role at the Red Sox's player development facility in Fort Myers, Florida, and mainly work with position players.

With a strong background in the technology and analytical side of baseball, Smith hopes to expand her skills.

“As the hitting coordinator, I run all of our technology side for hitting at Carroll,” Smith told the MLB Network. “The number of different resources that the Red Sox have as far as tech goes, I’m really excited to get my hands on that and learning the different metrics and being able to dive deeper into what I currently have is pretty exciting.”

Women have made significant advancements in the world of professional baseball in the past year. In November, the Miami Marlins named Kim Ng as their new general manager. She is believed to be the first female to serve in that role for any professional men's team in North American sports. 

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