Lisa Fernandez is just not believing this, not for a second. Here she is twice an Olympic gold medalist, on her way to the Athens Games, every bit the icon in softball that Mia Hamm is in soccer, and this guy’s ordering her around as if she’s a lowly, raw recruit.
Some of this was expected, of course. After all, she and the rest of the U.S. Olympic softball team were spending this December day training with the Navy SEALs. But she and some others had just completed their task–picking up a boat, holding it over their heads for long minutes, running with it into the water and flipping it over, and jumping into it before rowing it back to shore–and now here’s this guy barking at her.
“Why are your shoes untied?”
“I’m like, `I don’t know,'” she remembers.
“Fifty pushups,” he barks.
“We’re like, `Fifty pushups. You cannot make us Olympians do 50 pushups,'” she remembers. “I said, `I’m a pitcher.'”
“Fifty pushups,” he barks.
“We did everything [on the boat drill],” she remembers. “Our team’s like, `Are you kidding me? Fifty pushups?’ But we got it done.”
“Why’s your shirt untucked?” the guy asks Fernandez.
“I don’t know,” she says.
“Fifty pushups,” he barks.
“Why are you celebrating?” he asks after she has completed them.
“Our group won [the boat drill],” she says.
“No celebrating. You’re expected to win,” he barks. “Fifty pushups.”
“It was an opportunity for us to learn what it’s like to work hard,” she says. “You saw the tenaciousness that people had, the willingness to want to fight. Learning from the SEALs, what they have to go through, the mental toughness it takes to be on that elite thing.
“We now think of ourselves as Navy SEALs because we understand the time they put in is the time we put in. And together we’re very similar. They take a lot of pride in what they do. It was definitely a bonding experience. We learned a lot about each other.”
“The experience instilled the idea that you can’t do it alone,” catcher Stacey Nuveman adds. “I can’t carry a 150-, 200-pound boat by myself. It was more than that. But I can’t do it alone, and as soon as one person breaks down, the whole group breaks down. As soon as one person drops her hands, the whole boat falls. The idea is that it really takes everyone.
“It takes my teammates. It takes communication. Who’s going to be the leader? Who’s going to say, `Boat up?’ Who’s going to say, `Go to the water?’ Who’s going to say, `Flip the boat?’ All those little things that it takes to make it happen, those little tasks, are evidence as to how it works. You have to have everybody on board, you have to have everyone pulling in the same direction.
“For us on the softball field, it’s no different. We all have to be moving in the right direction both physically and mentally.”
The U.S. softball team has moved to Athens, where it is expected to win its third consecutive gold medal. In 1996 in Atlanta, in the first Games where softball was contested, the women managed that easily, but in 2000 in Sydney, they lost three straight in round-robin play, barely got into the medal round and won their title with a 2-1, extra-inning victory over Japan.
Japan and China loom as their toughest rivals in Greece, where the U.S. team also must play under the cloud of a recent tragedy. Sue Candera, the 49-year-old wife of head coach Mike Candera, died in mid-July of complications from a brain aneurysm she suffered while traveling with the team on its pre-Olympic tour. That prompted USA Softball to end that tour early, but eight days after his wife’s death, Candera announced he would continue coaching the team.
“Sue was so excited about the upcoming Olympics and would want me to continue on with our dream,” he said on the USA Softball Web site. “Our entire family is behind this decision and we know this is what she would want us to do.”
“He’s a strong man, next to my father the strongest man I know,” pitcher Jennie Finch told the Tucson Citizen. “And he is like a father to us. We know he’s going to have that void in his heart, but she’ll be right there and we’ll play for Sue. She wouldn’t have wanted it any other way (but for him to coach). I don’t know anyone who wanted us to beat up the opponents more than her.”
Finch is the face of this team, a role thrust on her when People magazine anointed her one of the 50 most beautiful people. But she is far more than that. She is also part of a daunting pitching rotation that includes the 33-year-old Fernandez, the team’s guiding light; 33-year-old Lori Harrigan, another going for her third gold; and 21-year-old Cat Osterman, who didn’t give up an earned run during the pre-Athens tour.
They are expected to key their team’s run to gold even though, as in men’s basketball, the world has risen to severely challenge their once impregnable domain. That was surely proven at the Sydney Games, which the U.S. entered with a 159-13 record in nine international competitions. In successive games it fell to Japan, China and Australia, and was reeling as the medal round began.
“That definitely woke us up,” Fernandez says.
“We could definitely see the change in other teams. It woke us up in that regard to let us know other teams are catching up. But the thing that was so exciting is that it strengthened the United States also because we realize that when our backs are against the wall, we still have the mental toughness and the ability to get it done.”
“It helped us come together as a team,” first baseman Leah O’Brien-Amico adds. “We’d never experienced that situation, and a lot of times you find out something different about your teammates when you’re in that situation. So I know this team, heading into Athens, we’re taking care of that and getting to know each other so well that no matter the situation, we’re ready for anything.”
They are a mix of youngsters like the 23-year-old Finch and the venerable Fernandez. They are blessed with power, traditionally the U.S. staple, and newfound speed. They come together from schools as disparate as Texas and West Palm Beach Community College. But they are forged now by their tour and their time together, by their tragedy and that December day they spent with another elite team.
“What’s so critical to us with Greece is the mental toughness,” Fernandez says, thinking once more of her time with the Navy SEALs.
“The mental toughness it’s going to take to realize you can accomplish whatever you put your mind to. If you want something, you’re really going to have to sacrifice. There are times when you train that you don’t want to move, you’re sore. But we have to continue to go, we have to continue to fight if we want that gold medal.”
