Q&A: Jaime Vieira, the Jays first female coach, is amongst baseball's growing group of trailblazers

Over the past few years, we have seen more and more women occupying breakthrough roles in sports, smashing the glass ceiling in traditionally male-dominated environments.

For Major League Baseball, groundbreaking hires have begun sweeping the league.

In early 2020, the San Francisco Giants hired Alyssa Nakken as an assistant coach, making her the first full-time female coach in MLB history.

Just last month, the New York Yankees hired Rachel Balkovec as the manager of the Tampa Tarpons, making her the first woman to manage an affiliated professional team.

North of the border, history continues to be made for pioneering women. In fact, the Toronto Blue Jays found their newest minor league hitting coach right in their own backyard.

On January 10th, it was announced that Georgetown, Ontario native Jaime Vieira would become the first woman to coach within the Blue Jays organization.

The former Humber Hawks softball player and coach obtained her Masters of Science degree from York University. She has been a part of the Blue Jays organization for three years, starting with the Jays Care Foundation as a programs coordinator before being promoted to a programs specialist. Vieira also spent the past year as a Baseball Operations research and development intern, where she assisted in the draft and completed various other tasks.

While it isn’t set in stone where Vieira will coach this season, she joins an incredible group of women who are breaking down barriers and creating a name for themselves in the history books.

Vieira joined BarDown over Zoom from the Blue Jays Player Development Complex in Dunedin, Florida to discuss her historic hiring, and the future of women within baseball.

BarDown: Congratulations on your new role. You're officially the first female coach in the Blue Jays organization. How incredible is that for you?

Vieira: Very cool. [It's] still a little shocking at times, but it's awesome. I'm super happy to be here.

So you grew up playing softball, and with baseball and softball being so similar, when did you realize you wanted to continue working in the field?

Yeah, honestly in school, I needed everything to be related to sports and I always felt it related back to baseball or softball. There was just a point where I knew that if I wanted to continue in education, I had to make it fun for myself. And that happened to be with baseball. So from that moment in school, I really tried to push for a career in baseball, I just wasn't sure what options were honestly open and available to me. So it just kind of worked itself out, I guess. My biomechanics background and my coaching background led me to this position.

Getting to not only pave the road for the next generation of women but to lead the pack while working with your hometown team must seem like a dream come true. What are some of the goals you hope to accomplish within your new role? 

I'm really excited to be more on the player development side and actually work with players. The last year working in the front office was amazing, I learned a ton, but I definitely was missing that touch piece of actually working with coaches and working with players. So for the next year, I'm looking forward to learning about what we do here at the player development complex. And just trying to embrace the moment and learn as much as I can, be a sponge and help wherever I can.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen more women come into these kinds of roles. Being a part of that group of trailblazers, what advice would you give a young girl wanting to continue in your footsteps?

I honestly would just say, stay true to yourself. If you want it badly enough, like keep putting yourself in the right direction. So for me, my path was very different than other people's but I loved biomechanics, and I loved coaching, and I just kind of blended those two worlds together. So if you love baseball, and you love marketing, or you love finance, there's room for you in the game, with whatever you love and the sport of baseball.

Being a woman in the sports industry at any capacity brings along some sort of adversity. How are you able to combat those kinds of challenges and how do you hope to see change for female coaches in the future?

I mean, unfortunately, it's something that I've always had, as a player, as a coach. Growing up in sports, you always had somebody telling you [that] you couldn't do something. So I just got to a point in my career where I had heard enough "no's” that I just stopped listening to them, and just kept pushing and kept finding amazing role models, amazing humans who didn't care that I was a female, didn't care what limitations other people had put on me and gave me a chance. And I think that's why I'm here.

If I had to give any advice to any women who are going through the same things is to, just as hard as it is, to try to not let it bother you. And if you're passionate, if you're excited about something, like keep pushing through it, because I'm sure you know all about it Jordan. As soon as you start to tell yourself you can't do something, that's when you're at a detriment. So as long as you're true to yourself and stay passionate about it, I think you can keep pushing and do anything you want, despite the people telling you no.