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At Beijing's Fengtai Softball Field, the United States and Japan had played to a scoreless tie when outfielder Jessica Mendoza came to the plate in the sixth inning. It was the gold medal game of the 2006 World Cup Championships, and Japan's flame-throwing pitcher Yukiko Ueno had stymied the Americans all day. Now the U.S. team had put a runner on base with two out.
“[Ueno] is the hardest pitcher ever and I remember thinking, 'I'm not going to let the ball go by me,'” Mendoza recalls.
What happened next came right from a storybook: Mendoza smashed a two-run homer to win the game and the championship. “It was a moment I had dreamed about since I was 6 years old—getting a hit when it mattered the most,” says Mendoza, '02, MA '03.
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Photo: Manuello Paganelli |
This summer, the 27-year-old Mendoza anticipates another golden moment. The American women hope to win a fourth consecutive gold medal for the United States, a goal all the more pressing because softball has been struck from the Olympic stage until at least 2016. Mendoza, who was a member of the Olympic team that competed in Athens four years ago, already has one gold medal.
The International Olympic Committee's decision to drop softball is “obviously completely heartbreaking to me,” Mendoza says. In October 2009, the IOC is scheduled to meet and decide which sports will be featured in the 2016 Games. Representatives for softball and baseball—which also was dropped—are mounting intense lobbying efforts to win reinstatement.
The U.S. team recently completed a 62-game, six-month exhibition tour across the United States. For Mendoza, the experience was about much more than the games themselves. “My purpose in being an Olympian is not just for the sport itself but also for the visibility it has given me to help others. I want to live my life in a way that I hope will positively impact another.”
She has conducted clinics and made appearances in Guatemala, the Czech Republic and Afghanistan in recent years. In South Africa, Mendoza ran a clinic for 600 children in the slums near Cape Town. “You could see in the kids' eyes how grateful and excited they were about the attention we were giving them,” she says. “I wished I could spend an hour every day after school with each one.”
A high school star in her hometown of Camarillo, Calif., Mendoza chose Stanford over the University of Arizona and UCLA, schools with highly touted and top-ranked softball teams, even though the Cardinal program was just getting started. “Jessica took a chance coming to Stanford,” says John Rittman, head coach of the women's softball team and an assistant coach at this year's Olympics. “She knew she had a world-class university off the field, and she decided she wanted to be a part of something new and be the first. She liked the challenge.”
An American studies major as an undergraduate, Mendoza earned a master's degree in social sciences in education. She was a three-time Stanford Athlete of the Year and was named Pacific-10 Conference Player of the Year in 2000. In 2001, Mendoza led the Cardinal to its first appearance at the NCAA Women's College World Series. She has been a fixture on the U.S. national team ever since, and in 2006 was named the USA Softball Female Athlete of the Year.
After the Olympics, Mendoza will serve as president of the Women's Sports Foundation, founded in 1974 by tennis legend Billie Jean King to advance the lives of girls and women through athletics. She also plans to spend lots of time with her husband of two years, Adam Burks, who remained at the couple's home in Moorpark, Calif., for the past six months while Mendoza was on tour. “His unbelievable support is what keeps me going,” she says.
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