Our Daily Dread: Mendoza's march to Switzerland, where she's far from neutral
By Jeff Latzke
The Associated Press
With the future of Olympic softball at stake, it would take something extraordinary to keep Jessica Mendoza from helping the sport she loves. Not even the
prospect of giving birth in a month is stopping her.
"As soon as they asked me, it was a no-brainer," said the Moorpark resident and Camarillo High grad who played outfield for the U.S. squads that won gold in 2004 and silver last summer in Beijing.
Mendoza will be among the athletes joining International Softball Federation president Don Porter when he makes a presentation Monday to the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, Switzerland, in a bid to get softball back onto the Olympic program in 2016.
The sport was cut from the 2012 London Games by an IOC vote in 2005.
While Mendoza won't take part in the formal presentation, she'll lobby, answer questions and, she hopes, "corner some IOC member and convince them why the sport should be in."
Seven sports -- the others are baseball, rugby, roller sports, squash, karate and golf --
will each make presentations to an IOC executive committee that will recommend two events for inclusion in 2016.
"The voice of America is clearly for softball. No one doubts that," Mendoza said. "It's getting the voices of the girls who play softball throughout the world to be louder."
Mendoza has traveled to Europe, Central America and Africa on her mission to expand the sport to places it had rarely or never been played before. Already the president of the Women's Sports Foundation, she has also been serving as an athlete ambassador for the ISF's "Back Softball" campaign for Olympics reinstatement.
She has visited South Africa, the Czech Republic, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic -- plus made a trip to Afghanistan that included visits with U.S. troops -- to reinforce the contention that softball is a global sport.
As part of its campaign, Porter said his federation has distributed $3 million in softball equipment in 70 countries over the past three years. The focus has been in Africa and the Middle East
"Many of our athletes have really been very unselfish in coming forth and wanting to do what they can to help," said Porter, who called Mendoza a "passionate" advocate for the game.
Mendoza said that's the only way she knows.
"Instead of just being the person that's like, 'Gosh, that's cool that people are doing stuff and good luck. Do you need me to write a check? I can do that,' I've always just been very hands-on," said Mendoza, who isn't sure yet whether she'd attempt to play if the sport were back in for the 2016 Games.
Mendoza credits an experience from her father's childhood with planting the seeds
for her volunteerism.
After Gil Mendoza broke into a basketball gym and got caught, a coach threatened to turn him in to the police -- unless he tried out for the team. The coach ended up taking Mendoza's father under his wing and turning him into a three-sport athlete -- baseball, basketball and football -- who would earn a scholarship to play at Fresno State and get out of Watts.
"My father is a first-generation Mexican-American and sports changed his life," Mendoza said. "It allowed him to basically live his dream, but it was only because he was given the opportunity by one person. Everyone else kind of turned their backs."
Mendoza said she picked up a "you never know who you can help" philosophy and found an outlet to apply it.
"That's what's beautiful about sports in general is you give someone a bat, a ball, a piece of sporting equipment and what it does to help them just be better people," Mendoza said, "to get out of whatever situation they might be in temporarily for that moment, to be whoever they want to be."
== Read Jessica Mendoza's blog as she's in Switzerland (linked here)
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