What It’s Really Like to Compete in the Olympics: Nicole Mendes’ Story

Nicole Mendes

Mexico had never been to the Olympics before for softball. And they had never won an Olympic game. For the longest time I really struggled with how do I answer whenever somebody says, “How amazing was it?” because there were points where as horrible as the coach was, I was looking at my teammates and how they responded and knowing you're in this no-win type of situation where you can't really respond how you want to. It was the first time I had ever been exposed to a male treating a female that way and I was so mad to the point of tears. I just think about some of those teammates and the way that they carry themselves and the way that they grew, what an amazing experience to be playing alongside them. And so our very first game, we got to win and it was incredible.

Elizabeth Montavon

Today I'm joined by Nicole Mendes, a two-time NCAA national champion, Olympian, and one of the key contributors to Oklahoma softball's historic run at the top of the sport.

During her time with the Sooners, she became known for delivering in the biggest moments, finishing her career as a 360 hitter and a three-time Women's College World Series All-Tournament selection. She went on to represent Team Mexico at the 2020 Olympics and has continued her career professionally with Athletes Unlimited and the New York Rise of the Professional Softball League. She now continues to shape the game as an ESPN softball and baseball analyst.

Nicole, thank you so much for joining us.

Nicole Mendes

Well, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. As soon as you asked, I was like, yes, I'm coming.

Elizabeth Montavon

You are such a no-brainer, perfect fit for this show. You're such a great storyteller in your own content, and so it's gonna be really fun to hear more about you. I'm calling it the “Nicole Mendes lore” because there just has to be so much behind you because you're incredible. But first, ground us a little bit. Tell us what you've been up to lately.

Nicole Mendes

Oh gosh, so it's busy, busy season for me broadcasting. So I broadcast softball and baseball in the spring and it is just right in the middle of it. So I've been traveling all over doing a lot of broadcasting and then I'm working with a few teams, some high school teams and some D1 teams on a mental training company. So whenever I'm not traveling, I'm working with them remotely. So it's been such a blast, but definitely a very busy season. Sometimes I have to look at my calendar and go, where am I? Where am I going next? What time is it?

Elizabeth Montavon

I have to say, as an avid follower of yours, you make travel look so effortless, like you are always going somewhere and you always look so good and put together and then you execute and do the thing and that's all like coming out fabulous and I'm like my god how do you do it because I know I look like a sewer rat when I travel, okay? That's as good as it's gonna get.

Nicole Mendes

Honestly, this past year, I think the key has been to try to be comfortable, but elevate my dressing just a little bit up. You know, give me a lip gloss, give me a good hat, and give me a comfortable pair of jeans. And like, it's a game changer for travel, for sure.

Elizabeth Montavon

I think I might need you to just do a mini content series on that. I know you have so much free time right now. So if you could just whip up a little content series on how to look good and travel for work, I'm here for it.

Okay, I know everybody wants us to get to the big important question, which is, Nicole, what's your story that no one's ever asked you about?

The Olympic Experience: Expectations vs. Reality

Nicole Mendes

Yeah, I think it's more so everyone's assumed a certain story, and they never really asked the right question. So in 2020, the Olympics got canceled and they got pushed back. And I had been playing with the Mexican national team and it had been a really great experience leading up to that. had played with them for three or four years at that point. And the women that I got to play with were incredible. I was one of the youngest ones on the team. So looking up to them, learning from them, growing from them, they were just still to this day, some of them are my best friends. I really truly do love the women and how they shaped me. But COVID in itself was its own chaotic monster. And you add that onto the Olympics and you're going and you're representing your country. I was playing for Mexico and it was such a prideful thing because I got to represent a side of my family. Both my grandparents from Mexico had passed away. But being able to represent them meant so much. I had tears in my eyes the very first game but people always ask, “Wow, how amazing was the Olympics?” and that assumption of just because you go to the Olympics, your experience is 100% amazing and it definitely was and I don't want to take away from that at all. I had some of the best experiences of my life but I do think something that was really difficult and I had to learn and grow and push through a lot was what is it like to be playing for a country financially that you're not getting any monetary assistance or help? What does it look like to fundraise for that while you're still in college? What does it look like to, quite frankly, like having a coach that isn't the best and treats females in a way that female athletes should never be treated or even females in general? What is it like to play in the Olympics with no one in the stands and they fill the stadium that's empty with crowd noise and all of these things happened in 2021 Olympics. And I think that that was something that no one had ever asked. They said, “wow, how amazing was it?” but they didn't say, “how was the Olympics?” you know, and so I always felt the pressure to go, “it was amazing.” So grateful, so thankful, so blessed. And I was. But there is that hovering butt on the other end of that sentence of, but there are some things that can definitely be improved. There are some things that were really hard to struggle with and I think that was really whenever you asked that question of hey like what is something that no one's ever asked that was the first thing that came to mind.

Elizabeth Montavon

Wow, I mean that's an incredible way to kind of pull back some layers on an Olympic experience. And you're right, we don't hear that side of it very often. I think as athletes, we tend to try to determine if this was a good experience or a bad experience? Was it a good practice or a bad practice, right? And that binary thinking can be so detrimental in so many ways. But in this case, it's detrimental in how you reflect on your Olympic experience. And I would be willing to bet my net worth that you're not the first or only Olympian to feel this way and also feel the pressure to say, “but it was good. It was great. I loved it.” But there's all these things that I want to say, but if I do, I might sound ungrateful, right? Or like I didn't appreciate this opportunity.

I really want to go back to what you mentioned around the coaching component and the coach for the national team, maybe not being up to par with what you were looking for at the time, but also how he treated women specifically. What stood out to you there?

Coaching Challenges and Team Dynamics

Nicole Mendes

I do think that we had an amazing group of women who were strong and powerful and also vulnerable and soft. And so there was this fine balance that a lot of them had. Honestly, it just got to the point where it's pretty manipulative of, well, like if you don't do this, if you don't pay for this, then I'll get somebody else. And I know we qualified for the Olympics, but they're going to go in your place. If you don't do this, then you're not going to the Olympics. And so that causes a lot of stress, causes a lot of tension and these are women that you care about. These are things that are happening to them, things that are happening to you and you're going like this isn't right and you're sick but it's this Olympic dream and for softball last time it was in the Olympics was 2008 so it's not like I have every four years and I'm guaranteed that the sport is gonna be in the Olympics and I'm good to go. I don't know if it's ever gonna be in the Olympics again, and fortunately it'll be in LA 2028, which is incredible. And I'm really, really excited. But I do think that there was just a lot going on. And while the coach themselves didn't necessarily have the biggest knowledge of the game, I've worked with coaches who are open to learning, open to communicating. It just wasn't that way. It was very much a need for control, and “I'm the one who got us to the Olympics.” So that was just really hard to deal with when it's supposed to be a celebration of your athletic feats and you're supposed to be there. And I forgot to mention the first day that we got to Tokyo, we were there for a month traveling against the professional teams and the college teams in the country of Japan before we got to the Olympics Village. And the very first day that we got there, we played a double header and I tore ligament in my ankle. So I actually was playing the Olympics with a torn ligament and that just adds a little bit more of a damper. So it was a crazy experience but again, I think for the longest time I really struggled with how do I answer whenever somebody says like how amazing was it because there were points where as horrible as the coach was, I was looking at my teammates and how they responded and knowing you're in this no-win type of situation where you can't really respond how you want to. But the grace and the strength and the dignity with how they handled it, I think was truly something because I'm fresh out of college and these women are three, four, five years older than me and I'm getting to see this and experience this and it was the first time I had ever been exposed to a male treating a female that way and I was like so mad to the point of tears where I'm like you shouldn't be treating somebody like this and just frustrated and instead of being frustrated to that point I got to see, yes, you're feeling this way. What does it look like to take the next steps? What does it look like to continue on? And the burden is still there, absolutely. And all of that, but the strength that they showed was just truly incredible. I just, man, I just think about some of those teammates and the way that they carry themselves and the way that they grew. And it was just seriously like, what an amazing experience to be playing alongside them. And that's where I go, yeah, the Olympics was great because that's who I got to play with. That's who I was fighting with side by side. We got to make history. We won our very first Olympic game. Mexico had never been to the Olympics before for softball. And they had never won an Olympic game.

Elizabeth Montavon

Oh my god.

Nicole Mendes

And so our very first game, we got to win and it was incredible. And we got to hear the Mexican national anthem being played and we're just standing there in the stadium. And there's just like this moment where it's just you and your team and it's just incredible. And you know, highs and lows and so for the longest time I didn't know how to answer, well, how is this experience when it's so great but also so chaotic and honestly like horrible at the same time. How do you handle that? How do you manage it? How do you tell somebody like, oh well, you know, it's good and bad. And I think that was a really hard thing because it felt like it could only be one or the other when it really was a mix of both.

The Importance of Community in Softball

Elizabeth Montavon

Yeah, first of all, I'm so sorry that you had such a terrible experience with a coach. I mean, there's so many things that are so detrimental to athletes' careers, right? Injury, financial strain. But when there is a particularly toxic power dynamic in the mix between a coach and athlete or multiple athletes, it can devastate an athlete's career. It can completely derail it. It can end careers. And so so sorry that you had that experience. You don't deserve that. No women in sport deserve that experience, but I'm so happy to hear you had teammates who had the experience to uplift you, potentially protect you, teach you how to navigate this situation. I know in a fun way we call them girls girls, right? But you know, really it's when we have those athletes who are a few years older than us and they're willing to lend their leadership and kind of put their wings around us and protect us a little bit, that can also be a make or break it moment for a young athlete. Do you think that that spirit of “looking out for who's coming behind you,” is that predominant in softball or was that special to this team specifically?

Nicole Mendes

Definitely predominant in softball. I think a lot of struggle, not just with the Olympics being in, being out, but also the professional league. It's been around for a long time and people go, wow, I see AUSL and that's incredible that softball finally has the pro league. And I'm like, it's been around literally since the ‘90s and no one knows because it's been such a struggle to get it off the ground. And with that, all the professional athletes that have come before have done such a great job of just not only trying to push and advocate for give me a little bit more, push this a little bit more, we deserve more, but also as soon as you come in as a rookie, you're being told, “Hey, this is what it is and this is what we deserve. Do not settle for this. This is unacceptable. They're gonna try to do this. You're not gonna accept it.” And I think that's something that's amazing. And you don't always see that in the day-to-day living that you have out in the “real world.” But whenever you talk to these women in softball and how they push and they don't just think about themselves, and I think it's a credit to how hard we've had to fight to be able to go, how do we grow this game? How do we make it to where it's at a level and we're seeing what's happening in soccer. We're seeing what's happening in basketball with the female leagues and we go, “I want that. I want to do that.”

And if they can do it, we can do it. And I think that's been more of a push now than ever of the people who have been there and have experienced it, looking to the younger generation saying, here's how we can.

Elizabeth Montavon

You know, in our Gen Z research on fans of women's sports, I feel like where my mind immediately goes is those team-based sports that create such a great community, especially for kids and through their adolescence. And my mind immediately goes to softball. It goes to volleyball. It goes to lacrosse, because I see such tight-knit communities that are just so insanely passionate about what they do. And when you really think about it, I've never played any of those three team sports that I just mentioned, but my friends that I had who did, it seemed like so much of their life was dedicated to getting to practice, getting to tournaments, all the things around it. And when you have a sport that really draws people in to spend that much time in it, there's something really special there. You know what I mean? And so I think, again, softball is really one of those properties that's just gonna blow up.

We just need the right few investors and players to kind of put those pieces together, but it's absolutely on that trajectory. Now you mentioned that it was on the team, it was on the players of Team Mexico to do a lot of fundraising to pursue this Olympic dream. I guess that's not that unusual to hear about in the context of the U.S. doesn't fund any Olympians and Paralympians on their journey to the games. So I guess I can kind of see how that would be possible and would happen. But at the same time, I'm still a little bit shocked. Tell me a little bit about what your team had to do to raise those funds and what that pressure was like for you guys.

Fundraising and Financial Struggles

Nicole Mendes

Yeah, the coach, the program has completely turned over. There's new leadership, so I no longer play with Mexico. So I don't know if this is current or up to date, but at that time, was, we're paying for our flights to go to training camp. We're paying for our flights to go to competitions, or we pay half of it, and then they pay the other half for us to go to world competitions. You know, it was very much a struggle to get a clear answer, “Hey, this is when you're gonna get paid. Hey, we're gonna refund you,” and so a lot of the women on the team were a couple years out of college some of us were still in college. And so there's that financial burden of okay, well, how much am I gonna have to shell out? How much do I need to fundraise? And so I think it was very much all right, well, we'll do lessons to supplement our income in the meantime. Okay, well, hey, mom, hey, dad, like, this is my dream, you know, and very, very hard conversations to have, especially for whenever you're a high performer, you're like, want to I want to do it. And whether that's competing for an Olympic medal or whether it's being able to provide for yourself financially. And so that that was just a struggle because you didn't have an exact number. You didn't have any idea. And you had no idea if you’d ever see that money again. And so it came down to, well, we wanted to get jerseys and there were certain jerseys that we had, but they were about five years old. And so we pitched together and we got some new jerseys. So it was just like, it was very much an experience. It felt like a grassroots level. But again, the way that I think it's it's truly incredible the way that the women on the team to your point of being so tight knit. Whenever you quote unquote trauma bond together, you're stuck together from hype. But there have been a ton of situations that we had to navigate over the years and leading up to it wasn't as bad, but I would say in 2019, 2020, 2021, that's whenever it starts to get the dynamic of the team, of the coaching staff, the program start to feel a little different.

Elizabeth Montavon

I see. And this is a really good reminder that the way a national team can operate is not always reflective of what you expect at a pro league level, right? And I think people assume if you're on a national team, you're getting the best of the best, just like you would get in insert “pro league name here.” And that is not always the case. And they can look completely different. And yeah, this is just a really great example of that, because I think it just doesn't get talked about enough, just like, you know, to your earlier point.

Nicole Mendes

Yes.

Reflections on Achievements and Future Goals

Elizabeth Montavon

We don't talk about the less than wonderful side of competing at that very highest level at the Olympic games, at the Paralympic games. I wanna hear a little bit from you on being so young and had you just graduated college by this point?

Nicole Mendes

Yeah, and so there's this whole other side of this big lead up, right? So I'll take you all the way back to whenever I was nine years old and the USA softball team came to play the University of Houston. I grew up in Houston and they played at a city park and I went with my team and we cheered in the stands. We got autographs from the team members afterwards and I walked back to my car with my mom afterwards and I told my mom, I'm mom, I want to play in the Olympics one day. And it was a dream in 2008.

It goes, all right, this is the last Olympics. It's done, it's over with and crumbled, right? And I get older and I start to have these goals of, okay, well, this is what I want to do and I want to go play in college. I want to win a national championship. I want to win professionally. I want to play professionally. I want to do all these things. And it was announced that softball was going to be back in the Olympics in 2020 in Japan. And I immediately added that to my list. So I'm going through college and my career, and I get the invitation to play with the Mexican national team and it is a blast. It is so much fun. Again, the people that you play with truly does make a team and I win two national championships. I go on to have all the success. I go on to have an incredible coach, incredible teammates at the college level at Oklahoma. And then I go on to play in the Olympics and I play professionally and I'm like, check, check, check all these goals and dreams that I've had since I was literally 10 years old. And then I'm just like sitting, I immediately get back from Japan, I have a week, and then I'm back on campus finishing up grad school and I have no idea what I want to do.

And professional softball doesn't pay great. So if I want to play, I got to find a way to make money and I got to figure out a career and I need to figure out how to manage all those emotions that I had just gone through with the trials and tribulations of the Olympics experience in Japan. And then what are my goals? I don't know. I just accomplished all of them. Question mark. What's next? And I think that's one of the hardest things as an athlete, you're always working towards something. I just didn't because these were such long term goals. I never really thought, OK, well, what's next? And so that identity piece, I was 22, literally won a national championship, stayed at home for two days, and then I joined the Mexican national team and then we went on to go to the Olympics and I get back, and that was my summer. That was that was my senior year of college into the summer. And then in the fall, I'm just sitting there twiddling my thumbs going, well, now I no longer have a team, the program that I worked at as a GA within the athletic department, I was privy to a lot of information so there was restrictions on like I can't really have those same relationships that I had with student athletes before. There had to be that boundary line and well then there was the isolation piece and I found a great group of GA friends in college but still it's not the same and you lose that identity and you lose that piece and even though I was playing professionally you don't get to work out quite the same way that you do whenever you're in a team sport with your team day in and day out. You don't get those reps the same way.

Navigating Identity After Athletic Achievement

Nicole Mendes

And so there were a lot of questions of like, what is not my identity, but like, what is the path forward? What is a decision that I need to make? Is it worth it? Do I want to do it? Can I afford to do it? And so that fall of 2021 was probably just a lot of deep diving into what is it that I want out of my career? What is it that I want to do for next steps? And I just had never felt so unprepared and being the person that was always on top of it, super talented, super disciplined, super dedicated. And now I have zero answers and I have no idea where to take my first step forward. That was really hard to navigate. And I talked to a lot of friends in other sports as well who had recently graduated and it was similar experiences.

Elizabeth Montavon

You know, something we hear a lot in sports is kind of that origin story of, you I was eight or nine or ten years old and I had this dream and I chased it for this long and I achieved it or I'm still on the path to achieving it, right? And it's poetic and it's beautiful and we all love hearing it and reading about it. But you're right. There is not a lot of content, a lot of media around, I've achieved every goal. I've checked every box. I'm standing at the very top of this mountain and the only way anywhere from the top of this mountain happens to be down, right? And we've read a few pieces about it. There's been some things about post-games blues, but there really just isn't enough discussion around that experience for an elite athlete, in my opinion. What comes after the pinnacle of each season or maybe the pinnacle of your career. So for young athletes who are looking ahead at their big event, right? Their big goal. And they haven't planned anything for what's on the other side of that because they're just in the hunt right now. Tell us, what did you do to navigate that kind of dip in spirit, in morale, in motivation, in direction?

Preparing for Life Beyond Sports

Nicole Mendes

It's so funny that you say that because right now I am in Chicago and tomorrow I'm going to be speaking to a bunch of juniors and seniors in college. It's the Next Game Summit and what they do is just help prepare them and say, “Hey, here's what's coming. Like here's what's next. If you want to pursue professional, great. Here's some resources. Here's some avenues. Here's what it really looks like. If you want to go into the professional world, great. Here's some contacts. Here's some ways to get connected here. Here's how you create a resume.” Right? And these things that seem so simple on the other side, whenever you're in college, your whole world is eat, wake up, workout, go to school, train, practice, homework, sleep, do it again, compete, and beyond that, there is not too much looking except for, know summer's coming and I get to take a break from my sport, right? Or whatever it may be. And that's something that's truly not talked about enough, but I think something that I'm going to speak about tomorrow is the importance of looking outside of your sport while you're still in college. What I mean by that is finding friends who are outside of your sport and it's so easy and outside of athletics truly because it's so easy to stay in the athletic world which I think is fantastic and there's so much support there, but there is a little bit of grounding that happens whenever you have a friend that's outside of it.

And if you look at me and say, well, they just don't get it. I know they don't get it because they're not doing it. But what they're doing, you don't get either. And that doesn't mean that you can't connect and you can't relate to one another and you can't have those solid friendships and foundations. And it really helps stabilize you whenever you move on from the next phase. Because whether you play professionally or go on to a job, it's going to be different. It will not be like college. And I would say the first thing is to find connections outside of sports and that helps with grounding you a little bit. The second thing that I would say is find out what are the things that you enjoy outside of your sport. The year prior to me graduating, I tore my ACL. So I had a little bit, and then COVID happened. So I had a little bit of check-in of, “Hey, what is your identity? Who are you outside of your sport?” So whenever I finished, there was a question of what do I do? But I didn't have the question of who am I?

But I do hear that a lot of like who am I what is my identity outside of this is my job This is my entire life and it's absorbed by this and so finding things that you enjoy outside of your sport finding out who you are finding out what your identity is and take the time and it feels like, gosh, I don't even have five minutes. I just want to take a nap. I get it, I get it, but if you do that now, it's very much like whenever you're going to college everyone talks about time management. Going out of college, I think there needs to be a higher stress of preparation management. What are you doing to prepare? You would never go into a competition or a game or a match and not have no idea. I don't know who I'm playing. I don't know what I'm trying to do. I don't know what my goal is. You would never do that as an elite athlete. So why in the world would you set that off for that next phase of your life that's inevitably coming? Would you go, yeah, like we'll just wing it. You would never do that in a league competition because that's who you are, that is who you're trying to be. You're still that same person, the context is just a little different.

Embracing the Utility Player Mindset

Elizabeth Montavon

I love that mindset. It reminds me of one of your taglines, which is you are the “utility player in life.” I think that's brilliant. And I would never, ever say that you are someone who is one dimensional. Your world seems so big. You are so multifaceted. And so all of that completely aligns. Did you come up with that kind of line about yourself? When did you come up with that and what would you say is like the origin of it? Because I feel like this whole story so far has kind of led us to that point and this just makes it that much cooler, but I want to hear it from you.

Nicole Mendes

Yeah, so I was a utility player in college already. I pitched, I played outfield, I played first base. So I was used to it and I hit, I was used to running into a lot of different directions being pulled in a lot of different directions. And I had always communicated that. But there was this fine line of, well, that's that's sports, that's athletics. And it was probably about two years ago, I was at a marketing conference and Morgan Stewart, she's a defensive specialist for softball and baseball and really just an incredible, incredible person. I always enjoyed talks with her and she was at that event and we were having dinner one night and we're all talking. There's a group of us and she goes, you know, somebody was saying something about being a utility player and like real life and like how you have to wear all the different hats. Like you're such a utility player in real life. I was like, I never thought about that. Like I never felt like I quite fit in and I was just that one hat. I felt like I was curious and I wanted to have all these things, but I never would have phrased it quite like that. And so as soon as she said it, I was like, you're right. I am. I am. And I'm so used to that and I love it. And that is where I want to be. And I don't know why I had also at the same time been kind of feeling this pressure of, I have to have one job and I have to do one thing because that's what everyone does. And that's what all my friends who are entering and working in the corporate world are doing. And if I want to be a “success,” that's what that journey looks like. And whenever she said that, I kind of sat with it over the weekend. I loved it immediately, but I kind of sat with it over the weekend and I was like, holy cow, I am somebody who is a professional softball player. I'm somebody who is a broadcaster for multiple sports. I am somebody who owns a mental training company and I'm going through this list. I'm somebody who loves traveling, who is a foodie through and through somebody that loves to give talks and does public speaking. Like I do all these things and I do all these things really well. Why in the world do I feel like I need to stifle myself into one profession? And if you want to, that is great. That is just not me. And I need to hang on to that. And I need to remember that because the struggle of the comparison really hit home. And so I was like, you know what? I'm going to say that as a reminder and I'm gonna go anytime I feel that tug of, that's not what they're doing. Well they're getting paid this much. Well they're getting these opportunities. Well maybe I should just focus on one thing. Remind myself, like you are a utility player in real life. It's not limited to just the softball field. It is what you do, it is who you are through and through and you enjoy life because you experience life in multiple different areas and there's no restriction and there's no rule that says you can only do one thing. And you just were fortunate enough to experience a lot of your careers early on. And I think that was really that like tipping point of, know what, that's gonna become my tagline and I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna run with it. So thank you, Morgan Stewart. Maybe I should license it. I don't know, “utility player in real life.” I should trademark it.

Elizabeth Montavon

You should trademark that one. I love that this is just another example of a time that a woman or women in your sport have had your back and helped make you better. That is just such a cool through line on your entire story. And I know that you are the kind of woman who would turn around and do the exact same thing for anybody else. But I think a really valuable lesson here is that, you know, for athletes who feel like they're struggling with identity, maybe it really is just that you're trying too hard to be an expert at one thing and you're actually an expert at so many. And it's like being unbalanced, right? It would be like if every night for dinner you only ate one specific food, that's not a balanced plate. That food can be as healthy, it can be perfect, but alone it's not really gonna do a lot for you. And I think this is just a great message to those athletes out there who are multi-dimensional and they don't want to have to cut away pieces of themselves to fit into a box, even if that box is excellent, right? And it's the best of the best at something. Sometimes to really be you, you have to be really good at a lot of things because you just have that much potential and fire inside you. And Nicole, you are absolutely one of those people.

Nicole Mendes

I love it. Thank you. I appreciate that. I truly do think it's so important that even if you are a “specialist,” on one thing, like your metaphor of eating a meal, you're not just that one thing. You're a friend. You're a sister, a mother, a husband, whatever you are. And whatever that one specialist, that may be the main portion, but there has to be other things involved. And so I think there is a relief in knowing and being okay with going, like it may be smaller, but I'm not just one dimensional and I don't have to have it all figured out and be an expert immediately right away in this one thing. There's things that I can experience.

Elizabeth Montavon

That's so cool. Tell me a little bit about what you've got coming on the horizon. I mean, I think we all know that it just means Nicole's gonna learn more things and become really good at new things. That's what's on the horizon. But if you would be so kind, what's on your calendar?

Exploring New Experiences and Growth

Nicole Mendes

Yeah, one thing and this is professional life aside, I think this is something that I started back in August and I've taken it and I've run with it is, what let me dive a little bit deeper into real life. Like what is experiencing life? What do I want to get out of life? And I think one thing that I really want to find more of is like joy and connection and community. So I challenge myself to try new things starting in August. So since then, I learned how to make pasta. I did a coffee tasting class. I hate coffee, but I tried it and it was so much fun. Will I drink coffee? No, but I now know what notes and smells and how to make it very well. So I tried jujitsu for the first time. I did sand volleyball, like all these different experiences and they have been so rich and full and I don't need to fully dive into that community to see it and appreciate it. I've gone to Broadway shows and just things that have stretched me and pushed me to think outside the box and they have helped me. And one of the biggest ways that it's helped me, I mentioned I'm in a mental training company called Growin. So specifically I work with high school age students and smaller D1s. And one thing that I love is it's not your whole world. Whenever I get to experience what else there is to offer, I realize this is not my whole world. There's more to life. And it's really helped me add in this level of, yeah, I'm gonna teach you how to compete and I'm gonna teach you how to be the best and I'm gonna give you that mindset and I'm gonna give you the tools to lay that path but I'm also gonna teach you how to be a human and an athlete not be an athlete who has a side life and that's something that is so so important and not Trained enough because you have to train it anything that you do you have to train and so I had that coming up on the horizon I'm working with some high school teams some travel ball teams or over the summer and then into the fall, I start working with the college team. So I am beyond excited about that. And then broadcasting that will carry on through regionals are coming up in about three weeks, four weeks now. And I can't believe it. Softball season as quickly as it came. I feel like it's slipping out of my hands, but the professional league, AUSL, is here in the summer. So going to get to do some things with them and then going into the fall. A couple of volleyball games on the broadcasting end. So yeah, I'm so excited.

Celebrating Achievements and Legacy

Elizabeth Montavon

So happy for you, this is all wonderful, you deserve it, and more. Before we wrap, I want to move to our segment called The Last Lap. So, Nicole, if you, Nicole Mendes, were the answer to a sports trivia question, what would you like that trivia question to be?

Nicole Mendes

Okay, this is one, because I went to school at the University of Oklahoma. Now some backstory. Lauren Chamberlain, she broke the home run record for most home runs ever. Not a single season — ever. She also had a single season on our program. Jocelyn Alo broke her record for most home runs ever. There's currently a freshman who broke the single season freshman record. She hit 32 home runs. The season still has about like six weeks left. It took Jocelyn Allo literally an entire year to do that. She broke it at the women's college World Series. Now with single season all time, freshmen or anybody is 37. So safe to say she's going to be on pace to break that record as well. There's a lot of hitters and beyond that list, there's about five other Sooners that are in that top 10 home run all time list. And so there's a lot of power.

Elizabeth Montavon

Wow.

Nicole Mendes

So my claim to fame is that I own the highest RBIs and it came from three home runs in a single game and postseason. And I hold that record at Oklahoma. And so I may not have hit the most, but in that game I did. I did. So that would be my trivia question. Who holds the highest single game RBI home run record?

Elizabeth Montavon

Hell yeah. You know what? We love consistency, but we also love somebody who can really shine under pressure in the moment. Like, hey, we need those athletes too. I'm one of those, so I'm with you. Nicole, thank you so much for being vulnerable and opening up about the good and bad of the Olympic experience and how it's shaped your career. This has been such a special episode to me, and I think it's going to matter to a lot of athletes out there. So thank you for joining us.

Nicole Mendes

Thanks for having me. This was great. It needs to be talked about and I think, I really do think that what you're doing is so special and so I can't wait to hear all the stories that are gonna come out.

Elizabeth Montavon

Oh my gosh, thank you so much. And what's your Instagram handle? I should have done this earlier for people who want to follow along with you in your amazing life. What's the handle?

Nicole Mendes

Instagram handle is at Nicole N-I-C-O-L-E underscore M-E-N-D-E-S underscore. And you'll find some variation of Nicole underscore Mendes underscore on Instagram, on TikTok, on X, on Pinterest. I don't know, go wherever. But those are my socials. All the places.

Elizabeth Montavon

All the places. Yes. Go find our girl Nicole. You're going to want to follow her. Like she said, it's going to be a great year and beyond.