Cool Kid: She’s an all-American girl

Jazmin Foti is an all-American girl down to the baseball uniform she proudly wears.

Jazmin is the only girl on her Mead Little League baseball team, the Spokane Athletic White Sox.

The second-grader at Farwell Elementary School is happy to talk about her minority status.

The boys on the team “have been nice to me. I feel pretty good about it (being the only girl). I think I’ll stick with it,” she says with a wide and dimply grin, which is missing a few teeth.

The oldest of three girls, Jazmin also enjoys playing soccer, although she isn’t on a team.

“I just like kicking the ball a lot,” she says. “I also like to throw balls up in the air and catch them. That’s why I wanted to play baseball.”

Jazmin says second grade has been particularly fun, adding that her favorite subjects are math and science.

“I like second grade better than first grade because you get to do harder work like multiplication and division,” she says. “I just like doing that kind of stuff.”

When she grows up, Jazmin says she wants to be a veterinarian because she loves science and animals. She has a large collection of stuffed animals on which she likes to “practice.”

“My favorite animal is the panda bear,” she says during a break in the action of one of her recent baseball games. “They are really interesting. I know a lot about them, like they eat bamboo and like to climb trees.

“Also, what is important about them is that they are endangered. That means they could become extinct,” she explains.

When she isn’t “practicing” veterinary medicine on her toys, Jazmin likes to study bugs and collect specimens. She has learned a lot about bugs and their life stages from her teacher, Jenny Price.

“I like bugs,” Jazmin says. “They are really interesting, and they help stuff.

“My favorite bug is the super-worm,” she says. “It isn’t a bug until it gets to the adult stage of a beetle. Bugs start out as eggs. Then they are a larva, a pupa and an adult.

“Super-worms are like mealworms, only they are lots bigger and darker. I like them. They are really cool. I let mine crawl on my hand,” Jazmin says.

This summer, she says, she is looking forward to free time with her family. She loves swimming in area lakes and staying with her family in cabins.

Jazmin says she also is looking forward to being in the third grade.

“I am excited to go to third grade, but I will miss some of my friends and my teachers because I am going to a different school next year,” she says. “I hope they remember me.”