The CT Softball Blog

The email arrived just about four years ago, dinging its way into the incoming folder of a Yale assistant softball coach.

The subject matter read, simply: “Hong Kong Baseball Player.”

That was the Bulldogs’ introduction to catcher Mady Smith.

“Yeah, it was definitely more of a unique recruiting experience,” Smith said with a smile.

On Friday, Smith–a catcher and utility infielder–begins her last season in a Yale uniform when the Bulldogs open up the 2025 season at the 6th annual Boerner Invitational in Arlington, Texas.

While she’s never risen to the level of a star Yale softball player (Smith has played in 48 games in three seasons, hitting .152 with 7 RBIs), she is a program player who has left her mark on everybody who has called her a teammate.

“Mady Smith is one in a million,” said Yale softball coach Laura Ricciardone. “She’s just as great of a teammate as they come both to her Yale teammates, and what she’s done for the program, too.”

It’s been a long journey in both years and miles, but Smith wouldn’t change any of it for the world.

“Honestly, it’s been everything and more,” Smith said. “I feel like I owe everything to this program. Literally everything that I have is because of Yale softball and I’m just so grateful for the opportunity and especially coming from such a niche background, I guess you could say. it’s been a really great experience.”

Smith was born in Rochester, N.Y., and she lived there for nine years when her parents decided to relocate to Hong Kong to be teachers.

“I kind of just had the t-ball experience there,” Smith said of her Rochester days. “I was young when we moved, so that’s definitely a weird transition. It’s kind of crazy and surreal. You’re literally moving around the world.”

Smith was enrolled at the Hong Kong International School, where she found she could continue her sports career … by playing baseball.

“It was kind of just like a normal American-based school system,” Smith explained. “But they had a baseball team and they had Little League. So I joined Little League. I didn’t play softball. I played baseball. I played on the guys’ team from age nine to 18.”

Softball never came on the radar until her mid-teens.

“And I kind of realized that I was actually kind of anti-softball,” she said. “I was like, oh, I’m never going to play softball. I’m a baseball player.”

As she grew up, though, she realized the opportunities she could have playing softball.

A trip home to Rochester changed everything.

“When I was home for the summer, I joined a travel softball team; just local, nothing crazy competitive or anything,” said Smith. “I kind of got exposed to competitive fast-pitch softball and from there as I started to get older, through high school, I started going to these recruiting camps, which is how I ended up finding Yale. It was kind of a stroke of luck.”

She started writing to as many coaches as she could, plugging in her subject line: “Hong Kong Baseball Player.”

“I definitely think that having this international experience and being a baseball player is definitely a unique story that definitely helped me stand out for sure,” Smith said. “Even though the odds were kind of stacked against me being a baseball player from Hong Kong, which is not necessarily typical.”

It got Riccardone’s attention.

“She is just someone that makes an impression immediately,” the coach said.”When the opportunity came up to bring her into this recruiting class at the time, you immediately remember everything about Mady Smith, and that has nothing to do with who she is as a softball player. You remember everything, who she is as a person. What Smith brings to us is just above and beyond. I wish I could keep her forever.”

Sadly, Riccardone can’t keep Smith forever.

Once her softball career is done, Smith is heading back to the baseball ranks. Major League Baseball, that is.

Literally. After graduating from Yale, Smith has been hired to join the front office of the Baltimore Orioles.

“I’ll be doing some baseball operations stuff,” she said. “It’s kind of a generalist baseball operations position. I think with salary, arbitration, scouting, pro-advance draft, trade deadline, really anything under the sun with baseball operations. I kind of have known my whole life that I couldn’t leave the game. I can’t bear the thought of leaving Yale softball and leaving the game, so this is my next best path, for sure.”

She hasn’t just left her impact on the Yale campus, though.

Back in Hong Kong, she discovered more girls than ever playing and a growing softball program at her former school.

“I actually went back to Hong Kong this Thanksgiving break and got to talk to some of my former coaches and the current team there now, and there’s definitely a push to make softball bigger instead of just baseball,” said Smith. “There’s a lot of girls who have kind of followed in my footsteps, I guess, which is really cool to see. I would love to see more softball specific development.”

From Rochester to Hong Kong to New Haven, Smith, who is majoring in political science and Chinese, has seen the world and knows it has shaped the person she has become.

“I think it completely shaped my worldview in pretty much every facet,” she said. “I kind of look at it from a worldly perspective, which I think is really valuable.”

First off, however, this Hong Kong Baseball Player wants to help Yale go as far as they can this season. After finishing in a three-way tie for last year’s Ivy League championship, Smith and the Bulldogs would like to do that again–and go even further.

“We want to win the Ivy League championship, win the tournament, go to a regional and make it as far as we possibly can,” Smith said. “The goal is all about us and winning and what it means to us in going all the way.”

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