Pitcher Cat Osterman is coming out of a three-year retirement to try out for the U.S. softball team, two years before the sport is played at the Olympics for the first time since 2008.
“My heart is racing with excitement as I post this,” was posted on Osterman’s social media. “Last fall I made the decision to put the cleats back on and give it a go one more time. Plain and simple, there’s unfinished business. I’m honored and excited to be trying out for the @usasoftball USA National Team in January… excited is an understatement when I think of the journey ahead.”
Osterman, 35, last played professionally in 2015 and last played for Team USA in 2010. She has been an associate head coach for Texas State since 2015.
In 2008, she pitched the first five innings of a 3-1 loss to Japan in, at the time, the last Olympic softball game. The sport had already been voted off the Olympic program.
In 2004, Osterman made her first Olympic team at age 21 while taking a year off from the University of Texas. She was the youngest player on the team that took gold in Athens.
“I experienced the greatest joy I think I can ever have, being on top of the world, and then I spent 12 months absolutely beside myself because we got a silver,” Osterman said, according to espnW. “But how many people don’t even get to say they won a silver?”
Osterman joins fellow pitcher Monica Abbott and 39-year-old outfielder Kelly Kretschman as the three Olympians among 41 total athletes trying out for the national team. The oldest U.S. Olympic softball player since the sport was introduced in 1996 was 39-year-old Dr. Dot Richrdson at Sydney 2000.
In 2020, USA Softball will choose a 15-woman Olympic team. Osterman or Abbott, the U.S.’ two primary pitchers at Beijing 2008, would break Lisa Fernandez‘s record as the oldest U.S. Olympic pitcher.
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