Courtesy: USOC.org

Beth Mechum October 05, 2010

Being able to call yourself an Olympian and show off a couple of medals tends to open up doors that might not have been there previously.

People you’ve never met come up to you just to say ‘hi," and endorsers want you and that gold medal attached to their product.

Cat Osterman is no different. She is a two-time medalist (gold in Athens and silver in Beijing) and one of the most notable faces of USA Softball.

She walks red carpets, does countless media interviews and spends an inordinate amount of time in airports.

“When you have Olympian next to your name, people are definitely going to respect what you know and what you do in the sport a lot more. I know if I hadn’t had the opportunity to wear USA across my chest then my career could have easily been done right after I graduated,” said the University of Texas Longhorn.

Yet, when she is not doing media events or playing for the national team, Osterman spends most of her days coaching and teaching young girls how to pitch.

“I feel like it’s important because a lot of these kids look up to us that play on the national team – they see us on TV – and  to be able to interact with them on more than just the rare occasion it’s pretty big because I think then they realize what they’re capable of,” Osterman said. “It’s kind of funny that mom and dad can say the same thing that an Olympian can say, but when we say it, it’s like oh my gosh, it’s the golden rule now, so I think just being able to have that influence on anybody is great.”

Though softball is no longer an Olympic sport, Osterman still considers herself part of the Olympic Movement.

“I know when I look back, the two Olympics I was part of are some of the best memories I’ve had, as far as what the sport has given me,” she reflected. Through her camps and clinics she tries to spread the Olympic values of friendship, excellence and respect to the next generation of softball players. She also has a lot of experience to share.

Before starting her illustrious career at the University of Texas, Osterman was named the Gatorade National Softball Player of the Year.

She put her mark in the record books at Texas, ranking first in the nation in strikeouts per seven innings at 15.4, owning four of the top five seasons for the NCAA’s best strikeout ratio and she was the first of only three NCAA pitchers to register 2,000-plus strikeouts.

She is also the only softball player to appear twice on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Her time at Texas was impressive, but it is the time on the national level where she earned most of her attention.

Being an Olympian was never on Cat’s agenda – she was good at a bunch of sports as a kid, but never thought too seriously about where they would take her.

But after the national team played her travel team in Texas on a tour of the U.S. before the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Osterman realized she was more than just better than average, she had some serious potential.

“I have to admit it wasn’t a goal from when I was really little. In 2000, I played against the 2000 team that toured, and I played well against them. So that was the first time that I really thought about myself going,” she said, “I didn’t really dream about being an Olympian until I was 16 or 17.”

Her talent was recognized at that game and during her college career, so she was invited to be part of the national team, taking off a year at Texas to go to the Sydney Games where she and Team USA won gold.

After college, when she wasn’t playing for the national team, she spent her time coaching at DePaul University – a bit different than her usual young girls.

“I really enjoyed college coaching, there was more behind the scenes stuff than I realized,” she said. “It was fun, I thought it was going to be harder to turn off the player hat and to not want to be out there with them and for them, and I really didn’t … When I went into coaching, it was all about how I wanted them to do well and I wanted to see what we worked on happen in a game – so I really enjoyed it.”

Though she said she loved the job, she missed Texas and eventually moved back.

About three years ago, she was given a special opportunity to incorporate her love of influencing young girls and the Olympic Movement in one super-sized project called the Cat Osterman Experience.

The Cat Osterman Experience is a week-long event where teams from all over the world come to Bellevue, Nebraska to live and breathe softball.

Each team is guaranteed at least seven games on the state-of-the-art softball fields, are given two uniform T-shirts, live in dorm-like-abodes and are given nights of family-fun entertainment.

Osterman was approached about the idea by World Baseball Village LLC with just the premise of using her name on the product, but she had other ideas.

“I wanted to be more involved than just my name on it, I wanted to make sure that it would be run how I would want an experience to go if I was 13 or 14, so they said alright, and they put my name on it, and they drew up a contract of what I can and cannot have a say in and everything,” she said. “It’s been pretty easy – I get a say in a lot of what goes on, I feel like the first year was a big success and hopefully we just make it better every summer.”

Osterman’s experience is that of an Olympian competing in the Olympics, and she wants to share that experience with young girls all over.

“It’s just a way for them to interact and meet new people, and I felt like it is kind of a mini version of putting athletes in the athlete village – we take these teams and they have their own personal little village where they can interact and hang out with their friends and everything like that.”

In addition to the Experience, she also is part of Triple Threat Softball with Kelly Kretschman and Caitlin Lowe, traveling across the country holding camps for young players.

Osterman knows she owes a lot to the sport of softball and her time on the national team, and has no plans of taking it for granted.

“I wake up some days and think there will be a day when softball is not in involved in my life, but the truth of the matter is I don’t think I could live without softball being a part of my life, so I’ll always be doing something whether it's lessons or coaching, I just cant see myself getting away from it – it’s given me too much, I feel like, to not stay in it and give back.”