One of fastpitch softball's strongest advocates on a national level, Jessica Mendoza, was the featured speaker Friday at the Tennessee Fury select teams' banquet at the Rennaisance Center in Rossville.
Mendoza's career accomplishments include being a two-time Olympic medal winner and four-time first-team All-American at Stanford. She said this is the time of year she gets to do speaking engagements and hold clinics like the one on hitting instruction she'll conduct today at the Fury Academy.
Her message to the girls in attendance Friday was "Love it; dream it; live it." Her points of emphasis included having a passion for what you pursue, whether it's softball or something else, and that "student" is the first word in "student-athlete."
"You have to be able to do things that aren't easy," she told them. "You have to be the person doing it when no one else is."
Today's exclusive clinic is from 9 a.m. until noon for girls ages 8 to 12 and 12:30-3:30 p.m. for those 13 and up.
"My objective is to concentrate on the life-skills part of being an athlete, especially targeting girls 12 to 18," Mendoza said. "The whole component is to learn how to be confident in life -- in the classroom and with their skills on the field -- in order to be successful in life. That's the biggest message I'd like to send.
"However, a lot of players will be there because they want to become better athletes. That's fine, too. I can talk hitting for days."
Mendoza obviously has learned something about time management. She calls winters her "clinic season."
ESPN has much of her time in spring and fall. She's the network's lead analyst for college softball, as well as a sideline reporter at Southeastern Conference football games.
In between she'll be continuing her athletic career as a member of the USSSA Florida Pride in the National Pro Fastpitch league. All the while she balances life as a wife to husband Adam Burks and mother to 17-month-old son Caleb, who "already has his first bat," she told the crowd.
Mendoza is one of eight elite athletes who have announced decisions to leave Team USA softball to help further the professional game. That's merely one of her many causes.
"When most softball players reach the age of 21, 22 years old, they've got nowhere to go play," Mendoza said. "My goal for the pro league is to see it grow to where every successful, goal-oriented softball player can have a place to play."
Also among the acknowledgements at the banquet was the honoring of Kat Dotson, who last season as a freshman playing for Tennessee became the first in the Fury's five years as an organization to earn an NCAA Divison I All-America honor.
Organizers surprised her by reading a list of quotes from her teammates, showing a DVD slideshow recapping her college season and announcing her UT jersey and Fury jersey will forever hang on the wall together at the Fury Academy.
"I didn't expect to have any involvement," said Dotson, who had a standout high school career in Georgia at Savannah Country Day. "That was very thoughtful."
Dotson said what the young ones should most take away from the night is a point opening guest speaker Frank Reed, coach at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, accented and Mendoza echoed, and that's to thank their supporters.
"In the last year I started to realize how much my mom has done for me throughout the years," Dotson said. "As I get older I'm getting a little more emotional."
The Fury also recognized their Bryanna "Cricket" Blanco, from Maryville High School, for being one of 30 chosen for the Under Armour All-America softball game last July in Orlando, Fla. She's the Fury's second to be chosen. Kelsey Cartwright, a former standout at Goodpasture Christian who's now at Auburn University, was picked in 2009.