There are certain names that seem to belong in Williamsport. Rasmus is one of them.
Twenty-seven years ago, Cory and Colby Rasmus arrived at the Little League World Series with a team from Phenix City, Alabama. They were kids then, playing for their father, Tony, on a team that would win the United States championship before falling to Japan in the 1999 world championship game.
Cory eventually became a Major League pitcher and spent four years pitching for the Braves and Orioles from 2013-16. Colby became a first-round draft pick and spent a decade in the majors from 2009-18.
Now another Rasmus is standing in the middle of a Little League diamond in South Williamsport.
Only this time, she wears a bow.
Kinley Rasmus has become one of the faces of the 2026 Little League World Series, and if you have watched Phenix City over the last week, it isn’t difficult to understand why.
The 12-year-old pitcher and shortstop has attacked hitters without much concern for the size of the stage. She has thrown strikes, made difficult defensive plays look routine and hit in the middle of some of Phenix City’s biggest moments.
And while much of the national attention has understandably centered on her famous baseball last name, there is another branch of Kinley’s family tree that runs straight through Hattiesburg. Her mom, Jill Mathis Rasmus, once wore black and gold for Southern Miss. In some ways, Kinley’s story isn’t just another chapter in the Rasmus baseball family. It is a collision of two remarkably athletic families.
Long before she was sitting in the stands in Williamsport watching her daughter become one of the tournament’s biggest stories, Jill Mathis was making plays of her own. The Marianna, FL, native transferred to Southern Miss from Gulf Coast State College in Panama City, FL and became a fixture in the Golden Eagles’ lineup.
Her 2010 season gives you a pretty good idea of the athlete she was.
Mathis played in all 53 games for Southern Miss, starting 29 at shortstop and another 23 as the designated player. She hit .317, the best average on the team, and tied for the team lead with 53 hits. She also led Southern Miss with 37 RBIs, while collecting 13 doubles, seven home runs and scoring 29 times.
Early in the season, Mathis delivered the game-winning double in an upset of No. 19 Florida State. Later that spring, she had a stretch against Northwestern State in which she blasted four home runs, including a grand slam, and drove in 10 runs.
She came back for her senior season in 2011 and remained one of the most dangerous bats in the Southern Miss lineup. Mathis hit .302 with 45 hits, 11 doubles, eight home runs and 32 RBIs, while starting all 48 games for the Golden Eagles. She also drew 24 walks and finished with a .439 on-base percentage and .537 slugging percentage. By the time her two seasons in Hattiesburg were finished, Mathis had established herself as much more than simply a former Golden Eagle in the Rasmus family tree, she had been one of Southern Miss’ most productive hitters.
Southern Miss also named her to its list of Conference USA All-Academic selections. Before Hattiesburg, she had already been an NJCAA All-American at Gulf Coast State College after hitting .380 with 12 home runs and 45 RBIs.
Jill’s brother, Kinley’s uncle, is Jeff Mathis, who spent 17 seasons catching in the major leagues. Mathis was a first-round pick by the Angels in 2001 and built one of the longer careers of any catcher of his generation. He played for the Angels, Blue Jays, Marlins, Diamondbacks, Rangers and Braves and developed a reputation as a defense-first catcher trusted by high-level major league pitchers.
In other words, Kinley grew up with baseball knowledge coming from just about every direction. Pitching on one side. Catching on the other. A mom who played Division I softball in the middle of it.
Then there is Dad.
Cory Rasmus doesn’t have to imagine what his daughter is experiencing.
He has lived it.
He was part of Phenix City’s 1999 Little League World Series team alongside his brother Colby. Their dad Tony, coached the team as Phenix City made it all the way to the championship game. For a 12-year-old baseball player, Williamsport can feel impossibly large. After Little League, he became one of the best high school pitching prospects in the country at Russell County High School in Alabama. The Braves selected him 38th overall in the 2006 MLB Draft.
He eventually reached Atlanta in 2013. Then, just five days after making his Major League debut, baseball produced one of those moments that couldn’t have been scripted much better. On May 27, 2013, Cory came out of the Braves bullpen at Rogers Centre in Toronto. In the seventh inning, he looked toward home plate and saw a hitter he’d known his entire life: his older brother, Colby.
They had grown up playing together. They had gone to Williamsport together. Now, for the first time, they were standing on opposite sides of a baseball game, in the Major Leagues. Colby won the first round.
He went the other way and lined a double off Cory into left field. It was a rare brother-against-brother matchup and the first time the two had ever faced one another in a meaningful game. Cory later admitted that while he didn’t particularly enjoy giving up the hit, getting the chance to pitch against his brother was still pretty special.Across four big-league seasons with the Braves and Angels, Cory appeared in 84 games, throwing 123 innings and recording 121 strikeouts. And now he is back in Williamsport, this time as an assistant coach, watching his daughter stand where he once stood.
That’s the part of the story that would feel scripted if it weren’t actually happening. The last Phenix City team to reach Williamsport before this summer was Cory’s team in 1999. The next one included Cory’s daughter. His brother Case is the manager. Case’s son, Ryker, is Kinley’s teammate. Three generations of the family are woven into two Phenix City teams separated by nearly three decades.
Yet Kinley has managed to make the story her own.
Her first appearance on the Williamsport mound made that clear. Facing Tacoma, WA, in Phenix City’s opener, Kinley threw six scoreless innings. One hit. Eight strikeouts. Those eight strikeouts matched Mo’ne Davis’s record for the most by a girl in a Little League World Series game. Kinley did it while becoming just the ninth girl ever to pitch in the event.
Phenix City eventually lost 2-0 in extra innings after Kinley was forced out by Little League’s pitch-count rules. But by then, people were watching. The white bow in her hair became part of the story. So did the phrase that began following her around Williamsport:
Fear the Bow.
Then came Monday night against West Chester, Pennsylvania. Phenix City was down 5-0 and staring at elimination when Kinley entered with one out in the third. She didn’t allow another run.
Over 4⅔ innings, she surrendered only two hits and struck out six. At the plate, she drove home the tying run during Phenix City’s comeback.
The Southeast champions eventually won 6-5. And she wasn’t finished. On Tuesday, with pitch-count rules keeping her off the mound, Kinley went 2-for-3 with an RBI and a run scored as Phenix City beat Tacoma 4-2.
Her second hit gave her another piece of Little League history: the most hits by a girl in Little League World Series play. That’s what has made this run different from a novelty story. Kinley isn’t merely participating. She is changing games.
Those six strikeouts pushed Kinley’s Little League World Series total to 14, tying Davis for the most ever by a girl in tournament history.
For Southern Miss fans, that is what makes Kinley’s story worth following. The connection isn’t a distant one. Her mother wasn’t somebody who briefly appeared on a roster in Hattiesburg. Jill Mathis was one of Southern Miss softball’s best hitters during her time there.
She led the Golden Eagles in average. She led them in RBIs.
And fifteen years later, her daughter is standing on arguably the most famous youth baseball field in America while millions of people watch. The television graphics will naturally mention Cory Rasmus. They’ll mention Colby. They might show clips from that 1999 Phenix City team. They’ll probably mention Jeff Mathis and his 17 seasons behind a Major League plate.
There are baseball stories on both sides of her family, stretching from Phenix City to Major League clubhouses and from Marianna, Florida, to the softball diamond at Southern Miss.
But eventually every family story reaches a point where somebody new has to write the next chapter.
This one belongs to Kinley. The bow just makes her easier to spot.
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