Next Wednesday, March 29, the 62nd edition of the National Baseball Series will begin with an unprecedented event: four Cuban referees will deliver justice in the opening duel between Matanzas and Granma, in the Mártires de Barbados park in Bayamo.
The experienced Yanet Moreno from the capital, with more than 15 years of experience in domestic classics, will lead the arbitration group made up exclusively of women, something that had never been seen before in a match of the main sporting event in the country.
Along with Moreno, who will be the principal, Miroslava Cumbá (first) from Guantanamo, Yalili Acosta (second) from Granma and Milagros Quiñones (third) from Artemisa, according to a report by Radio Rebelde journalist Guillermo Rodríguez.
Yanet Moreno has been the only female representative who has managed to gain a fixed space in the arbitration of the National Series. Precisely, her solid performance and her stability in her work have opened the doors so that other women have had the possibility of preparing themselves in order to deliver justice at the highest national level.
At 47 years old, Moreno is the main benchmark for female baseball referees in Cuba, and has always pushed for the growth of female representation in the island’s diamonds, something that will finally materialize in the 62nd National Series.
The road to this point has been a long one. In fact, Moreno began dispensing justice more than two decades ago in softball, a discipline in which she achieved the category of national referee in 2002. She began in baseball some time later at the request of Vilma Espín, then president of the Federation of Cuban Women, who raised the need to include women “so that female representation can be seen on the ground.”
“I then assumed the responsibility and every day I liked it more”, assured Moreno at the end of last year in an interview with EFE.
Finally, after many efforts and many hours of preparation, Moreno will have female company in the diamonds of the National Series with Miroslava Cumbá, Yalili Acosta and Milagros Quiñones, who we hope are here to stay.
