Achieving balance is one of life’s great challenges, and it’s something Meggie Meidlinger has had to embrace — both at work in Atlanta and on baseball diamonds around the world.
Meidlinger has racked up accolades on the pitching mound, including a gold medal as a closer for Team USA. While women’s baseball isn’t a sport in the Olympic Games, she and her teammates added a silver medal to that collection Aug. 3 at the Women’s Baseball World Cup. When she’s not on the field, the 36-year-old helps design sports facilities as a project architect with Atlanta-based HKS.
Between her day job, training and travel for sports, time is a rare commodity that requires diligent planning, almost like designing a building. It’s a daunting task, but Meidlinger said it’s a fact of life for most of her peers.
“As female athletes in general, it’s always a balancing act,” she said. “But if it’s not fun, what’s the point in doing it?”
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Professional women’s sports have entered a new era. The Atlanta Dream recently sold out State Farm Arena as the WNBA and its stars like Caitlin Clark rise to prominence. For the first time, roughly an equal number of female and male athletes competed in the Paris Games, in which American stars like Simone Biles won gold.
Global consulting firm Deloitte predicts women’s elite sports will generate more than $1 billion in revenue in 2024, a 300% increase from only three years ago.
But most female athletes, even those renowned in their sport, have to balance a full-time job with their athletic pursuits.
“I’ve seen people have to make decisions between careers, because you’ve got to pay the bills,” said Malaika Underwood, an assistant coach for Team USA’s national women’s baseball team. “And baseball doesn’t pay the bills.”
For Meidlinger, building a career wasn’t a difficult choice. She cultivated a passion for architecture alongside baseball from a young age. As a kid growing up in suburban Virginia near Washington, D.C., she always had two answers when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up.
“I was the second-grader to write ‘architect’ right next to ‘professional baseball player,’” Meidlinger said.
‘She could hold her own’
Way before wearing uniforms emblazoned with “USA,” Meidlinger’s interests were visible on her sleeve.
Her father, Rick Meidlinger, said she would play pick-up games with her neighbors and attend Baltimore Orioles games with her family; her time in Atlanta has since transformed her into a Braves fan. Upon enrolling in T-ball, she never looked back.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
“She was good enough where nobody questioned why a girl would be playing Little League baseball with the boys, because she could hold her own,” Rick Meidlinger said.
During Meggie Meidlinger’s time at Dominion High School in Sterling, Virginia, she became the first female in state history to pitch a perfect men’s varsity game. A resulting Sports Illustrated spotlight got her noticed by Team USA, which led to her traveling to Taiwan in 2006 at 18 to contribute to the gold medal-winning team. Two years later, they won bronze in Japan.
Girls and women playing baseball has become more common since Meidlinger and her forebearers first picked up a bat and glove. She didn’t meet another girl playing Little League until a high school tournament.
“I did not know that other girls were playing baseball,” she said. “It was a little bit lonely being the only girl in that experience.”
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Jenny Dalton-Hill, who is now among eight women in the Little League Hall of Excellence, said social media and increased support from baseball organizations have been game changers for getting more girls into baseball.
“Social media is a huge deal,” said Dalton-Hill, who is now an ESPN analyst. “Not only for awareness, but for support and the ability to get a message out quickly.”
Dalton-Hill was also a member of the Colorado Silver Bullets, a women’s pro baseball team in the mid-1990s started by longtime Atlanta sports and public-relations executive Bob Hope. The team, which disbanded in 1997, added to the rich history of women’s baseball that dates back to the WWII-era All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
Given the explosive growth of professional women’s sports, Dalton-Hill and Underwood said they’re optimistic women’s pro baseball could gain a foothold in the future. At the very least, they’re hopeful more girls playing baseball will put to end a question every female baseball player is asked.
“Oh, you mean softball?” Underwood said. “That’s silly... There’s no reason girls can’t play baseball.”
Building a career
Some players may struggle with choosing a more traditional career off the field, but Meidlinger’s architecture ambitions took root alongside baseball.
Her father said she would constantly build baseball fields and other structures out of craft materials. She even designed a treehouse they installed in their backyard.
Even as her baseball career rose to new heights, Rick Meidlinger said architecture remained her north star. She attended Virginia Tech because of its architecture program and placed sports on the back burner.
“Some of her teammates have found a way to maintain a career in baseball… but at the time, there were very, very few opportunities,” he said. “And certainly architecture was a passion.”
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Credit: Seeger Gray / AJC
Meggie Meidlinger’s architecture career also took her across the globe. Her first job after college was in Uganda to help design critical buildings like hospitals, schools and churches with Engineering Ministries International. Two mitts and a few baseballs were mandatory luggage items, she said.
As part of the nonprofit Baseball at Heart, she’s returned to Uganda several times to help establish youth baseball teams and coaching clinics. “The opportunities that sports are providing for young girls over in Uganda are a really cool thing to get to be a part of,” she said.
Her career brought her to Atlanta about a decade ago, and she joined HKS in 2019. She is currently designing the expanded and renovated baseball facilities for the University of Georgia.
“She’s in that world,” said Julie Volosin, HKS’s office director in Atlanta. “She has that knowledge of what works and what doesn’t, so she knows how to intimately design those spaces.”
Beyond instilling dreams of playing professionally, participating in sports can help develop skills that translate to many workplaces. Tamara Holmes, a Team USA and Silver Bullets alumnus, runs a CrossFit gym in California while also working as a firefighter. She said female athletes often gravitate to careers that provide flexibility to help balance work and sports.
“For someone like myself and Meggie, you either have to be a person that puts off long-term (career goals) to go this route, or you’re fortunate to get a career that allows you to work and play,” Holmes said.
Meidlinger said many skills translate between sports and traditional workplaces, which is why she’s such a strong supporter of developing youth sports — both at home and abroad.
“Sports are used for a much bigger picture than just the games themselves,” she said. “Teaching leadership and how to be a good teammate and sportsmanship are invaluable team assets that can take you anywhere in life — to a career in architecture or anywhere else life might take you.”
Meggie Meidlinger
Age: 36
Lives: Marietta
Hometown: Sterling, Virginia
Education: Bachelor of Architecture, Virginia Tech
Employment: Project architect, HKS Inc.
Family: Rick Meidlinger (father); Terri Meidlinger (mother); Jenny Clodfelter (sister)
Baseball medals with Team USA: Gold in 2006; Bronze in 2008; Silver in 2024
