With Olympics idled, ex-UK softball star staying primed for once-in-a-lifetime shot
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When it comes to former University of Kentucky softball player Brittany Cervantes, 2021 will be a year of firsts.
Cervantes, who played for the Wildcats from 2008 to 2012 and now is the team’s director of softball operations, qualified for the Tokyo Olympics as part of the Mexican national team last August when the squad went undefeated in the World Baseball Softball Confederation’s Softball Americas Olympics qualifier.
“It was the best experience of my life,” Cervantes said about the 2019 tournament in Canada. She said that she thinks the current Mexican national team is the best it has ever been.
2021 will be both Cervantes’ and Mexico’s softball Olympics debut, as well as the first time a player from the UK program reaches the global stage.
The Olympics organizing committee announced that softball will open the 2021 Tokyo Games on July 21, two days before the official opening ceremony. Six teams — Mexico, USA, Italy, Canada, Australia and host nation Japan — will compete for gold in the weeklong, round-robin tournament.
Before COVID postponed the Olympics, the softball competition was scheduled to be contested last month — from July 22 to July 28. Instead, Cervantes spent the time in California visiting her parents. She said it’s the first summer in a while she has been able to do so.
Once the first countries started pulling out of the 2020 Games, Cervantes knew it was only matter of time before Mexico would join them. She said she supports the decision to postpone the Games.
“There are more important things than softball,” she said. “We need to take this seriously.”
However, Cervantes isn’t using the summer months to slack on her fitness. She said she has been getting training workouts from the UK softball team’s strength trainers and going to parks to practice her hitting. Although the Mexican national team hasn’t announced any plans to change its roster, she said they’ve made it clear that players need to continue demonstrating consistent performances.
“We have to keep earning our spot on the team,” Cervantes said.
During her career at UK, Cervantes was selected First Team All-Southeastern Conference in 2012 and became one of only two UK players to hit more than 10 home runs in all four years of her career. She broke UK’s career home runs record in the process. After graduating, she was an assistant softball coach at Loyola for three years before returning to UK in 2019.
She has also been playing professional softball as part of the National Pro Fastpitch (NPF) league for seven years, most recently for USSSA Pride both at catcher and first base. In 2019, she was part of the USSSA Pride team that won the Cowles Cup, her fourth career NPF championship.
Cervantes said she remembers watching softball in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the last year the sport was part of the Games. She remembers being angry when they took it away for the 2012 and 2016 and is grateful for its inclusion next summer.
However, her chance to represent Mexico in the Olympics might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Along with baseball and karate, softball will again be eliminated from the 2024 Olympics in Paris in favor of skateboarding, sport climbing, surfing and break dancing. It remains to be seen whether softball will reappear for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
“I think any athlete who is serious about their sport has the goal of making it to the Olympics,” Cervantes said. “It won’t feel like a reality until I’m there.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 7:50 AM.