VERO BEACH, Fla. – The Nike RBI World Series is an event that thousands of athletes look forward to for an entire baseball or softball season. With more than 200 Nike RBI programs, each with hundreds of kids competing to advance from their region, the challenge of making it to the World Series is no small task.
For teams who do make it out of their geographical region, players are asked not just to pack their gear and favorite pillow but to turn in a "Breaking Barriers" essay about overcoming adversity or challenges in their lives, with a winner chosen in each division.
The contest serves as a personal but poignant demonstration of the athletes’ biggest obstacles they’ve encountered, with winners being recognized by MLB staff in front of the participating teams during the week of the tournament.
The Breaking Barriers essay contest started in 1997, established by Jackie Robinson’s daughter, Sharon Robinson. The contest challenges young athletes to recall a time they overcame a barrier by using one or more of Jackie’s nine values: citizenship, commitment, courage, determination, excellence, integrity, justice, persistence and teamwork.
This year, the winners for the softball, junior and senior divisions, respectively, were: Isabel Hernandez, a pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks' Nike RBI team; Justin Brown, an outfielder for Passaic (N.J.) Nike RBI; and Caleb Harley, a shortstop for Atlanta Braves Nike RBI.
“I was very surprised,” Hernandez said. “So hearing my essay be read out loud to the entire staff and the rest of the teams here was just unreal.”
For Hernandez, the celebration is twofold: This was the first World Series berth for the Diamondbacks' softball Nike RBI program in its history.
“This is the first time that we have won regionals and that we have gotten the opportunity to come here and play in the World Series in Florida,” Hernandez said. “I think [it’s] the first of many and the start of something big.”
Beyond softball, Hernandez has big aspirations as a scholar while still staying true to her passion.
“My dream is to graduate college with a master's degree in computer science engineering and continuing to play the sport that I love for as long as possible,” Hernandez said.
“Well, I didn't really expect to win,” said Brown of the Passaic team. “But when he started reading the quote that I chose, I was like, 'Wow, that's actually me, that's my essay.'”
The Breaking Barriers contest offers a chance for the young athletes to have a moment of vulnerability and to share personal stories with the power to inspire others, even when the winners themselves don’t feel particularly inspired.
“I hate English and I don't really like writing,” admitted Brown. “But it really gave me an opportunity to really try to do it, and I ended up winning something.”
Winning is what all athletes at the World Series hope to do, but they all know losing or coming up short is a very real possibility. The Braves' Nike RBI team, which lost via a 14th-inning walk-off in the semifinals against the eventual champion Diamondbacks, knows the sting of losing more than anyone else at the tournament.
Harley, the Breaking Barriers winner in the senior division, is a part of that team, and he was able to perfectly encapsulate the intensity of the elimination game.
“Just a dogfight back and forth, both teams competed,” Harley said. “We competed our tails off. Unfortunately, we didn't come out on top, but, you know, we just competed from the get-go.
“I feel honored, I don't even have the words to say it.”
Harley, Brown and Hernandez’s stories of perseverance and overcoming challenges in their lives are representative of the power that sports have to create strong and resilient individuals, with the Nike RBI program serving as the platform for those stories.