Lisa Fernandez

SPORT: Softball

Early Life

Lisa Fernandez was born to Tony and Emelia Fernandez in New York, New York, on February 22, 1971. The family later moved to California. Lisa's father, who played semi-professional baseball in Cuba, taught her to play softball at an early age. Lisa's mother, a recreational softball player, practiced every day with Lisa in their backyard, catching her pitches and teaching her how to maximize velocity and movement.

Lisa was the bat girl for her mother's team until she was old enough to play. She debuted as a pitcher at eight, losing her first game 25-0. Lisa's skills as a player developed quickly; however, her pitches were so fast by age eleven that her mother could not handle them and had to discontinue the daily practice sessions. In the same year, Lisa won her first Amateur Softball Association (ASA) championship.

Despite Lisa's early success, her confidence was shattered when a coach told her that she would never excel at higher levels of competition because her arms were too short. She went home from practice in tears and told her mother of the incident. Her mother made an appointment with a physician, who told Lisa that her arms were slightly longer than average. Later, Lisa's mother told her that she should never let others tell her what she was capable or incapable of doing.

The Road to Excellence

An outstanding athlete who also excelled at basketball and cross-country, Lisa chose to concentrate on fast-pitch softball while attending St. Joseph High School in Lakewood, California. During her career at St. Joseph, she pitched 69 shutouts, 37 no-hitters, and 12 perfect games. By the time she finished high school, she was listed in twenty categories in the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) record book.

After graduating from high school in 1989, Lisa enrolled at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where she led the women's softball team to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Women's College World Series titles in 1990 and in 1992. In the latter year, Lisa went undefeated with a 29-0 record. When she was not pitching, Lisa played third base with intensity and often won games with her hitting.

In 1993, as a senior, Lisa led the NCAA Division I with an earned run average (ERA) of .023 and also won the Division I batting title with an average of .510. While at UCLA, Lisa compiled a 93-7 record as a pitcher, was named all-American four years in a row, and won the Honda Broderick Cup—given to the nation's outstanding female athlete—in 1993. In addition to her accomplishments on the field, Lisa had a reputation with her coaches and professors as a hardworking student.

The Emerging Champion

After graduating from UCLA, Lisa devoted time to her already impressive amateur career. While still in college, she had played for the Raybestos Brakettes and the California Commotion of the ASA. She was an ASA all-American four times and was selected as the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the 1991 and 1992 Women's Major Fast Pitch National Championships. In addition, she established herself as an international competitor by leading U.S. teams to gold medals in the 1991 Pan-American Games. She pitched five straight games after the other two American pitchers were injured. Team USA featured Fernandez at the 1992 Women's World Challenger Cup and the 1993 Intercontinental Cup. The United States Olympic Committee named Lisa its Female Athlete of the Year in 1992 and 1993.

With her college career behind her, Lisa could concentrate her energies on international competition. In 1994, she batted .393 while leading the U.S. national softball team to victory in the International Softball Federation (ISF) World Championships. In 1995, Fernandez played for gold-medal-winning U.S. teams at the Pan-American Games and the Superball Classic in Columbus, Georgia. Her performance in the Superball Classic—in which she registered an ERA of 0.00 with a perfect game and a no-hitter, batted .511, and played third base flawlessly—established her as one of the world's best women's fast-pitch softball players.

Despite all her accomplishments, the public was still largely unaware of Lisa and her sport until the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. The U.S. softball team captured a gold medal at the Games, the first where softball was included as a medal sport. Lisa stood out among the talented U.S. players with a performance that was spectacular even by her standards. She posted an ERA of 0.33 with 31 strikeouts in 21 innings and a record of 1-1, the loss coming when she gave up a game-winning home run after pitching 9 2/3 perfect innings. In addition, she batted .348 with one home run, 5 RBIs, and posted a 1.000 fielding percentage. The performance of the U.S. players and of Lisa drew the attention of the news media and helped raise awareness of women's softball among sports fans in the United States and worldwide.

Continuing the Story

Despite receiving invitations from several professional teams, Lisa decided to maintain her amateur status after the 1996 Olympics. She continued to baffle hitters in ASA and international competitions with a combination of virtually unhittable rising fastballs and slow curves. She spent 1998 playing in Japan, teaching English part-time for the company that sponsored her team and returned to California with another gold medal from the (ISF) World Championships.

In 1999, Lisa received more awards and accolades, including the ASA/USA Female Athlete of the Year award, gold medals at the Pan-American Games and Canada Cup, and another national championship for her ASA team, the California Commotion. When not competing, she worked as an assistant softball coach at UCLA, a position she attained in 1998.

In 2000, Lisa was a leader on the U.S. softball team that won a gold medal in Sydney, Australia. She set an Olympic record in a game against Australia when she struck out twenty-five batters. For the Games, Lisa had a 0.47 ERA. Two years later, she pitched five consecutive perfect games during a pre-Olympic tour. In 2004, Lisa was again a significant force in the American gold medal run at the Athens Olympic Games. She set an Olympic record, batting .545 for the Games. At thirty-seven, she was chosen as a replacement player for the U.S. softball team in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. Coach Mike Candrea lauded her exceptional leadership, competitive drive, and versatility.

Lisa faced new challenges as she prepared for the 2008 Olympics. In August 2002, she married Mike Lujan, and in December 2005, the couple had a son, Antonio. Three years later, the family added a second boy, Cruz. After an absence from playing ball while nurturing her son, she had to work doubly hard to get back into condition, particularly to regain the arm strength that once enabled her to throw a softball at 68 miles per hour. In addition, she had to arrange a support system for her husband, parents, and friends to care for her son as she performed her workouts and UCLA coaching duties.

Lisa told an interviewer that she hoped to be a role model for women who wanted to have the best of both the domestic and professional worlds. Able to take her son on the U.S. team's pre-Olympic tour, she also told the interviewer that she had another motivation for doing well: to make her son proud of her. In April 2019, she was inducted into the Baseball Reliquary Shrine of the Eternals.

Lisa credits Title IX with allowing her to pursue many opportunities denied to generations of women that preceded her. Title IX was civil rights legislation passed in 1972 that prohibited sex-based discrimination. In 2022, Fernandez was promoted to the UCLA Associate Head Softball Coach. 2024 marked her twenty-sixth year as a member of the UCLA coaching staff.

Summary

Lisa Fernandez was often considered the world's most outstanding all-around softball player. With the support of her parents, she began playing fast-pitch softball at an early age and soon stood out among players in her age group. A talented multi-sport athlete, she chose softball as a primary sport in high school and set multiple records in high school, collegiate, and amateur competitions. Her overpowering pitching style helped the U.S. team to dominate international competition in women's softball during the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s and win gold medals in the first three Olympic softball competitions. Her performances in the Olympics and other high-profile tournaments helped publicize women's softball in the United States and worldwide.

Bibliography

Anderson, Kelli. “Relieved Pitcher: Against a Tough Field, U.S. Ace Lisa Fernandez Kept Her Cool and Delivered When It Counted Most.” Sports Illustrated, 9 Oct. 2000, vault.si.com/vault/2000/10/09/relieved-pitcher-against-a-tough-field-us-ace-lisa-fernandez-kept-her-cool-and-delivered-when-it-counted-most. Accessed 31 Mar. 2023.

Brill, Marlene Targ. Winning Women in Baseball and Softball. Barron’s, 2000.

Farber, Michael. “On Top of the World.” Sports Illustrated, 30 Aug. 2004, vault.si.com/vault/2004/08/30/8184350/on-top-of-the-world. Accessed 31 Mar. 2023.

"Lisa Fernandez Breaks Down UCLA Softball’s 1992 Championship and Her WCWS Career." NCAA, 17 May 2022, www.ncaa.com/news/softball/article/2022-05-17/lisa-fernandez-breaks-down-ucla-softballs-1992-championship-and-wcws-career. Accessed 19 June 2024.

O’Neil, Dana Pennett, and Pat Williams. How to Be Like Women Athletes of Influence: Thirty-two Women at the Top of Their Game and How You Can Get There Too. Health Communications, 2008.

Raboin, Sharon. “Lisa Fernandez Is Driven by Her Past.” USA Today, 1 Oct. 1998.

Rushin, S. “Playing with Heart.” Sports Illustrated, vol. 85, no. 15, July 1996, pp. 54-57.

Schizer, Meredith Wolf. "Softball Great Lisa Fernandez on How Sports Teaches 'So Much About Life'." Newsweek, 23 June 2022, www.newsweek.com/softball-great-lisa-fernandez-how-sports-teaches-so-much-about-life-1717627. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Steeg, Jill Lieber. “Fernandez Has Plenty of Support in Comeback.” USA Today, 27 Nov. 2007.

"Softball." UCLA, 2024, uclabruins.com/sports/softball/roster/coaches/lisa-fernandez/663. Accessed 19 June 2024.