11 minute read
Summer In The Spotlight
BY JASON ROMANO
Softball star Nicole Mendes capped her collegiate career at Oklahoma in June with a second national championship, then suited up for Mexico in July at the Tokyo Olympics. No matter where she’s at, her growing faith in the Lord is shining through.
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Nicole Mendes just finished a summer she’ll never forget. In June, she closed her college softball career with the Oklahoma Sooners by winning a second national championship, returning from an injury to help lead her team to the Women’s College World Series. The outfielder finished the season with a .364 batting average over 56 games.
Then, in July, she embarked on a new venture, representing Mexico on its national softball team at the Tokyo Olympics. The squad finished fourth after losing the bronze-medal game to Canada, 3-2. The host nation, Japan, won gold by defeating the U.S., 2-0.
Prior to the Olympics, we talked to Mendes about her growing faith in the Lord and winning the Women’s College World Series. We then followed up with her after the Olympics to hear about her experience in Tokyo.
Q&A: How does it feel to be a college softball national champion for the second time?
I definitely feel like I’m part of an elite club now. Definitely in some great company, but it still seems surreal. Sometimes I can’t even believe that this past season, this past year, even happened. So it’s just a surreal feeling.
Q&A: What’s the moment that stands out to you from this run you guys made to win the title?
Whenever you lose the first game [of the College World Series tournament], you have the next day off. And, it literally has nothing to do with softball, but I just remember the team getting together. Scissortail Park in Oklahoma City is right next door to our hotel. So, Coach [Patty Gasso] calls us down and she’s like, “We’re going to go for a walk.” And so we just walk around the hotel
and we find some rocks. Sarah Roberts is our chaplain and there had been a lot of battle things going on throughout the year, and she was talking to us that previous morning about battling and rocks and the significance of having something permanent there.
So Coach is talking to us and she’s like, “All right, everyone pick up a rock.” And we all pick up a rock and we’re like, “I see where this is going.” We’re over a bridge, over water. She was like, “This is a moment where you decide to go all in. Any worry, any doubt, anything that is putting you aside or anything between you and 100 percent, this is the moment where you put it into this rock and you throw it.”
It was pretty cliché, but it was so special because in that moment you could really sense the shift of everybody. And not that we weren’t all in before, but you could just tell that everybody had nothing between them. They weren’t going to let their own doubts, or their own circumstances overcome them or overwhelm them. Q&A: We’ve had coach Patty Gasso on the podcast before, so we know how important her faith is to her, and it’s a big part of the OU softball program. What was this year like for you as a spiritual leader and fifth-year senior?
I tore my ACL in the fall of 2019 going into 2020. So there were a lot of questions and uncertainty and confusion, frustration — a lot of struggle. As I continued throughout that year, I grew a lot in my walk with God that spring of 2020 after our season got canceled. That summer and fall leading up to this current year, it was a struggle. I’m not even going to sit here and lie; it was a struggle. I can’t even begin to describe some of the stuff that came up, but it was hard, and it really put my faith to the test.
I think as this year came about, I was just so grateful to be here with these girls and with my teammates, and be able to be on a field again at OU and represent this university. It was just special and I didn’t want to lose any moment. I didn’t want to be in the position where I would regret something 10 years from now, three months from now, anything. I wanted to make sure I went all out not just physically, but also spiritually.
One of my really good friends, Riley Boone, actually got baptized and it was one of the best moments. I was so happy. I think over half of our team came, maybe 90 percent of our team came, and we were just crying. There wasn’t a dry eye. We did it at Coach Gasso’s pool and it was just an amazing moment.
I think whether or not it’s a Christian university, it’s the environment that you’re in that really makes the difference. Not everybody is required to go to chapel; there are girls on our team that don’t come and that’s fine. But I wanted to make sure that as I’m going about my last year here, and whether or not they ask about it — teammates, people watching — I just wanted to make sure I was living my best life as an example for Christ. I wanted to make sure I didn’t regret anything.
So that was my intention as I went about this last year. And to see one of my teammates get baptized is just incredible.
It’s an amazing, amazing feeling that this girl I know and love is going to be with me forever in Heaven. So that was a really great way to cap it off. But I think that if you navigate the waters and areas that aren’t always supposed to be Christian friendly, just be true to yourself. Because I think that whenever you are a Christ-follower, if you follow out the guides that God has set before you, if you continue the path that God has set before you, it’ll show through.
Q&A: Tell us about that faith. Can you share your testimony and when you asked
Christ into your life?
Growing up, I got more involved with sports, and weekends became full of tournaments. We would be playing Sunday morning for championships. So going to a church regularly became really, really difficult. I was homeschooled as well, so my mom was teaching me. Faith was a big reason why my parents chose to keep me homeschooled, so she made sure I was reading the Bible, doing that kind of stuff. But going to church was really difficult and being around other people, just having that community of growth, was kind of hard sometimes.
As I was getting a little bit older, one of my cousins invited me to a church. At the time I had more time on my hands, and I started going and loved it. I loved the pastor, the worship, but the biggest thing I loved was just the fact that I could feel myself growing, learning the Word with other believers who were in front of me, beyond me, beside me. It was just a wonderful feeling of we’re all learning and growing and we’re all striving for this relationship with God. Even though we’re all on different levels, we’re all striving for the same thing.
I had been a believer for a long time, but I hadn’t been a part of a church and I hadn’t been part of that community. I hadn’t been baptized and so as I got older, I was like, “This is something that I really want to get back into.” And I started getting back into it more, and for a couple weeks my Bible study leaders were talking about baptism. I was wanting to do it and I was really, really self-conscious, like, “I had been a believer for how long now? I am this old now? Everyone’s going to think it was a fake kind of thing.” I wrestled with that a lot and eventually I was like, “You know, I love God so much. Why would I not want to do it?”
It was a moment for me where I had to clearly distinguish, “Is this something that I believe, or is this something I take action on and I’m going to take a stance on and not just say I believe it, but follow through with my actions? And do I care more about what others think or do I go and follow?” And so, I got baptized.
That for me was the biggest moment, I would say, where my switch kind of flipped up and I have been growing ever since then. I’m so far from where I need to be, but my relationship has been growing exponentially since that moment. And I’ve seen Him move in so many ways since that moment.
So in addition to playing for Oklahoma, Q&A: you also play for Mexico, which is where your grandparents are from. How did the opportunity to participate in the Olympics with Team Mexico come about?
One of my teammates my sophomore year, she played for Mexico for a couple years, and the coach reached out to her and he was like, “Do you have any girls on your team that would be interested?” He asked about me and she said, “Hey, is this something that you would want to do?” And I was like, “I don’t know. I’ll give it a try.”
So I traveled with them for one tournament in the summer and that was my tryout for them to see if they wanted me, and I just fell in love with the girls. So I was invited to join the team and I continued to play with them, and we qualified for the Olympics in 2019 in Canada, which was such an amazing moment to see all these girls’ hard work pay off. And I got to be able to contribute and that paid off as well. It was just such a sweet moment. I just look around at the girls and I’m just so grateful that each and every one of them have been on the team and that we’ve connected paths along the way.
It has to be such a unique experience Q&A: going from winning a title with your
Oklahoma girls to joining this other team with new girls on Team Mexico?
I honestly haven’t seen most of them in about a year because of COVID. I came back and I saw them and we all hugged. It was a good time. It did feel like a summer camp reunion a little bit. It’s cool to see how quick this turnaround is because going from college, it’s a lot more structured. But as you come here, you’re coming off of a great year and just having that feeling or high going into this moment where we’re going to the Olympics to play for a gold medal, it’s just another kind of high all on its own. I’m really excited.
We reached out to Nicole after her Mexico team competed in the Olympics and here’s what she had to say:
What was that experience like Q&A: competing in Tokyo?
The experience while playing in Tokyo was everything I thought it would be, and nothing like I imagined at all. It was incredible to compete at the highest stage and I felt so proud to represent Mexico. I remember during the first game just telling myself to take it all in. And that’s what I did.
Was there a moment where you felt Q&A:
God did something really amazing on or off the field?
I just think that He gave us such a peace with each other and how we played. Regardless of the end result, we were fine because God had given us such a great group of girls around each other.
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