Rachel Balkovec has been blazing a trail for women in professional baseball ever since her journey first began more than a decade ago, but even as she marks numerous historic milestones along the way, the pervading reminder of how much work is yet to be done lurks around every corner.

Last Sunday, Balkovec became the first woman in history to serve as a coach in the MLB All-Star Futures Game, just the latest of many incredible achievements she has accrued throughout her career, but on a day that should have focused solely on her coaching abilities and wealth of experience, her struggle as a woman working in Major League Baseball was once again thrown in her face.

"I was fully dressed, uniform, hat, everything, and I went to go walk in the clubhouse, and of all things a woman security person stopped me," Balkovec recounted.

"She was like, 'Excuse me, do you have credentials?' I was fully dressed in my uniform and I just stared at her and was like, 'Uh… I’m a coach.' And she goes, 'For who?' And I said, 'For the team!' And I probably got a little upset, and then a male security guard actually walked over and said, 'This is Rachel, she's a coach on the team.' And I just thought, 'What a reminder that we still have a lot of work to do.'"

Balkovec's work over the last 12 years has included serving as a strength and conditioning expert for elite college baseball programs like LSU and Arizona State University, as well as several Major-League outfits such as the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros before landing at her current role as a Minor League hitting coach with the New York Yankees.

Despite earning multiple master's degrees in biomechanics and human movement sciences, Balkovec's early days trying to break into the MLB ranks as a coach were filled with outright rejection and blatant discrimination, but her determination to succeed has helped transform those early roadblocks into fuel for breaking down barriers for women in baseball.

When Balkovec got the call to join LaTroy Hawkins and the American League coaching staff for this year's Futures Game, she wanted to be sure it was due entirely to her robust resume rather than her gender.

"It's a little bit awkward but I don't mind saying this, I think it needs to be said: I didn't want to be chosen for my gender," Balkovec said. "My initial reaction was, 'Why? I don't want to be chosen as a token woman that they can show around.'"

When Hawkins initially reached out to inquire about adding Balkovec to his staff, he got in touch with a former colleague of hers in Del Matthews, now MLB's Vice President of Baseball Development, and the former Assistant Director of Player Development and Scouting for the White Sox back in 2013 during Balkovec's strength and conditioning internship with the club.

"Back then no women were around, and definitely none were being hired as a PD [player development] coach of any kind, so when I was hired as an intern, [Del] knew about me then," Balkovec said.

"When LaTroy reached out to Del, who's now with MLB, and said, 'Hey I would like to hire Rachel,' he goes, 'Yeah I know Rachel!' I think they definitely were looking to have a well-rounded staff, and they said, 'You have 10 years of baseball [experience], you have absolutely earned the role,' so I was happy to accept."

Balkovec's experience the day of the Futures Game was at times painful, both emotionally and physically – she was struck by a line drive foul ball on her left calf and received a Major-League bruise thanks to Mariners prospect Jared Kelenic – but as she's shown over and over again through the years, toughness is Balkovec's strong suit.

"It's not the first time I've been hit by a pitch," Balkovec said with a laugh. "I was a catcher, so getting beat up is really not a foreign concept to me."

As Balkovec has earned her way to a prestigious and coveted role within the Yankees organization, she has drawn strength and inspiration from her experiences coaching and pursuing her education around the globe, as well as the few groundbreaking trailblazers who forged their way into the MLB executive ranks, such as the "three queens," in Balkovec's words.

"Kim [Ng], and Jean [Afterman] – I mean Jean, she's the queen! She's really the queen, she's just incredible – And Raquel [Ferreira]," Balkovec said, highlighting some of her heroes in baseball.

"I've always heard them going to Winter Meetings over the years and heard them speak. I've listened to every webinar or podcast I can get my hands on with them, because they were doing it before I was born. They're symbols to me when I think about, 'Ok, this is difficult, but what did they have to go through?' Because I know it was worse than what I've gone through, in their own way."

Kim Ng became the first female general manager in history for any major North American professional sport back in November 2020, when the Marlins hired for the role, following a lengthy career in MLB that included a three-year stint with the Yankees from 1998-2001 as an assistant general manager under Brian Cashman.

Jean Afterman, Yankees Senior Vice President and Assistant General Manager, is the third female in MLB history to hold the position of assistant GM, which she has done for the last 20 years while earning countless awards and accolades for her excellence as an executive as well as a trailblazing woman in sports.

Raquel Ferreira, Executive Vice President and Assistant General Manager for the Boston Red Sox, has also climbed the ranks in an MLB front office since first joining the organization in 1999, ascending to one of the highest executive levels any woman had ever held when she and three colleagues took over baseball operations for Boston in 2019, following the departure of former GM Dave Dombrowski.

These "three queens" may have been some of the earliest examples of women breaking through MLB's plethora of glass ceilings, but Balkovec is well on her way to joining that select group of extraordinary women as she works toward her ultimate goal of becoming a general manager someday.

"I don't think people realize it was so normal to just say, 'Oh, we don't hire women.' And that was 10 years ago, or even eight or nine years ago actually," Balkovec recalled.

"I just thought to myself, 'Wow, if I can't get a job, when is the next woman going to come around that they're going to hire?' Because my resume is unbeatable even by a man's standards. I thought it was my job to stick this out because now I know if I don't do it, I don't know the next person who's going to come around with my level of resume that they're going to be willing to hire. So pretty quickly after I got over the anger and denial stage, I was like, 'This is my job. I have to do this.'"

Over the course of her MLB journey from strength and conditioning coach to Yankees minor league hitting coach, Balkovec's innate curiosity and thirst for knowledge has driven her to absorb as much information as she can from every corner of the organization.

"When I was with the Astros, I was constantly popping into hitting meetings and pitching meetings and scouting meetings, and just about everything on top of strength and conditioning. And many people would think, 'Oh, that's really unique.' To me, that's how everyone should be, you should know a little bit about everything," Balkovec said.

"Obviously we all have our areas of expertise, but I like to really have a 10,000-foot view, hence why I want to be a general manager. I want to have my hand in just about everything and I enjoy that a lot."

Not only has Balkovec defied the odds of becoming a strength and conditioning coach in the Major Leagues as a woman but making the transition to become a hitting coach was another challenge that she embraced head-on. Thanks to the guidance and encouragement of Dillon Lawson, a former Astros colleague and now the Yankees Hitting Coordinator, Balkovec has gotten a glimpse of a number of different roles while piecing together her big-picture perspective of how teams operate.

"I think having a lot of different experiences is going to behoove me when I'm in a position where I have to hire the right people and manage those people and be able to relate to their experiences, and also being able to evaluate them as coaches and scouts and whatever else it is," Balkovec said.

"Right now, the general manager model obviously is very scouting-heavy, analytics-heavy. We don't see a lot of people coming from player development that cross over into that role, and I think just like anything else there are benefits to both, but there can be benefits to having somebody who's spent a lot of time in player development, working directly with the players, coaching, cross over into the GM role."

One of the many outstanding talented young players Balkovec has gotten a chance to work with firsthand is Jasson Dominguez, currently the top overall prospect in the Yankees Minor League ranks at just 18 years old, and one of the members of this year's AL Futures Team roster that Balkovec coached.

Balkovec had much to say about why Yankees fans should be excited about this youngster's potential, well beyond the amazing things he can do on a baseball field.

"Everybody can see his baseball talent, but people should be excited about Jasson because he is a one-of-a-kind person. That kid is a 10-out-of-10 aptitude, 10-out-of-10 energy, good teammate. He's very young, he's got some growing to do, but he's incredibly smart," said Balkovec. "He's going to be a one-of-a-kind athlete for MLB. I know people are comparing him to Mike Trout, and I always tell him, 'You're not Mike Trout. You're Jasson Dominguez.'"

While Dominguez may have gone 0-for-3 in his first Futures Game experience, fans can hardly wait to witness the skills and intangible qualities he can bring to the Yankees for years to come.

"He's going to bring energy, he's going to bring personality, and he's going to be a leader," Balkovec continued. "He's already a leader in some rights, as much as a leader can be who's 18. He's definitely that, even in this young crowd. He's a special person on top of being a special baseball talent, that's why you should be excited about him."

With a progressive approach to front office and coaching personnel like Afterman and Balkovec, as well as one of the best minor league farm systems in baseball, the Yankees have engineered a very bright future for the organization in years to come.

For Balkovec, working for the Yankees has been a "job utopia" so far.

"I love this organization, I really do," said Balkovec. "There's tons of progressive stuff going on, and the people making those decisions are, for all intents and purposes, 'old-school' if you will, so there is a unique blend. I love it. The players' responses to me have been great and I just love working with them. I love my colleagues. I don't know, I'm in a job utopia right now. And it's the Yankees, so it's just like a literal job utopia. I truly believe that we're doing some great things."

There is no telling what heights Balkovec will continue to reach or what further barriers she will demolish thanks to her undeniable blend of talent, work ethic, determination, intellect and baseball acumen, but as is the case for the Yankees on the field, the sky is the limit for her.