Eight years old at the time, Nalia Clifford was getting ready to accompany her family to a baseball field one day.
Her older brother, Nolan, was set to try out for the Naperville Renegades, a travel team.
“That morning, she came down in a pair of Nolan’s old baseball pants and a glove,” their mother, Theresa, recalled. “We thought, ‘OK, this is typical. Nalia loves to play catch, and she’ll go hang out with her brother.'”
But when the family arrived at the field, Nalia Clifford trotted to the registration desk and requested a tryout number.
“We were like, ‘Oh my gosh. She wants to try out,'” Theresa Clifford said. “The head of the Renegades organization looked at us and was like, ‘Give the girl a number!'”
Nalia Clifford tried out with the 8-year-old boys and threw more strikes than any of them, Theresa Clifford recalls being told. Nalia Clifford made the team and has been playing baseball ever since.
This season she has been playing for Neuqua Valley’s freshman/sophomore team. A freshman, Nalia Clifford is the first girl to play baseball at the school, varsity coach James Thornton confirmed.
“I probably wouldn’t be playing baseball right now if I hadn’t made that team and had such supportive coaches, teammates and parents,” Nalia Clifford said. “But I didn’t want it to be a big thing and get a lot of attention. I just wanted to play baseball.”
That’s still all she wants. No fanfare. Just baseball.
She’s driven to compete, a trait instilled in part by her three older siblings. The oldest, Nolan Clifford, is a junior infielder at Creighton. Maia Clifford played softball at Neuqua Valley, where she was the DuPage Valley Conference player of the year in 2021, and Lara Clifford played volleyball.
But Nalia Clifford’s athletic journey began on the sidelines of her brother’s baseball games.
“I would play catch with my dad, and I started pitching overhand to him,” she said. “That’s why I pursued baseball.”
Nalia Clifford continued to toil away, working meticulously on her pitching, hitting and fielding while watching her brother.
All along, she remained dead-set on baseball.
“At one point, we asked her to go to a Naperville Diamonds tryout for softball,” Theresa Clifford said. “She got an offer and did a great job — but then got in the car and cried and said, ‘Please, don’t make me play softball.'”
So baseball has remained Nalia Clifford’s focus. She also plays volleyball and started for Neuqua Valley’s girls basketball team last season — but has developed a special adoration for baseball.
“I understand that I’m the first girl to play baseball at Neuqua, but I’d rather draw attention for my skill, rather than just being a girl,” she said. “I don’t want other girls who like baseball to worry about the attention they might get. I’d rather just play.”
Along the way, the Cliffords have heard the typical tropes — “a girl just struck you out!” — but Nalia Clifford has shut that out.
“Nalia handles it like a champ,” Theresa Clifford said. “She handles it much better than my husband and I do. We hear some nasty conversations. But she holds her own, and I’m so proud of her.”
Thornton knew Nalia Clifford would try out this year. He said he had been watching her since she was a little kid.
“She’d be throwing the ball off a wall, working on her fielding mechanics, and this became a regular occurrence,” Thornton said.
Nalia Clifford earned a spot on the freshman/sophomore team and has played well. As of Thursday, she was hitting .255 with 13 RBIs and seven steals. She had made just one error as an infielder, and she had logged eight innings on the mound.
“We were like, ‘Wow, she’s for real,'” Thornton said. “She has the most consistent hands and technique on the frosh/soph team, no doubt.”
Thornton noted that Nalia Clifford is the kind of player the program values.
“She’s an athlete, and that’s what we want — athletes,” he said.
Nalia Clifford is an athlete focused on contributing to the team.
“Winning is the most important thing for me,” she said. “If I do well and we lose, it’s not that big of a deal. It’s just important to win.”
Sam Brief is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.
