OSTERMAN Cat

General
RETIREMENT AND COMEBACK
In 2015 she retired from competitive softball before announcing her return in late 2018. She was motivated by the US team's loss in the gold medal match of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, and a desire to win gold at the 2020 Games in Tokyo. "There's unfinished business [from 2008] that has obviously eaten at me for a long time. I came back for the chance to win back the gold medal all of us who were there still feel we let slip out of our hands against Japan in 2008. To be able to have an opportunity to do that, honestly now that I've made the decision, it's what motivates me every morning." (espn.com, 02 Oct 2018, 02 Jan 2019; hookem.com, 01 Jan 2021; tokyo2020.org, 17 Mar 2021; espn.com, 03 Feb 2021)

ATHLETES UNLIMITED
She was part of the first Athletes Unlimited league in 2020, which offered an alternative softball format. Initially she did not want to be part of the league as she didn't want to be away from her family for six weeks, but changed her mind after encouragement from her husband. "The more I got to know about Athletes Unlimited , the more I realised it was something I did want to be a part of. It's obviously super exciting for softball that there's a pro avenue that looks like it can be sustained, not only that the fans fell in love with, but that the players fell in love with. I know plenty of players had doubts when the idea was first pitched, but once we were in it, we were all in love with it." She has committed to playing a second season in 2021 after the Olympic Games in Tokyo, before she plans to retire from the sport. (hookem.com, 01 Jan 2021; espn.co.uk, 15 May 2020; espn.com, 03 Feb 2021; catosterman.com, 12 Sep 2020)

THIS IS US
In June 2020 she was among the full squad of 18 Houston Scrap Yard Dawgs players who quit the team following its first National Pro Fastpitch [NPF] match after the league's comeback from the COVID-19 pandemic. The entire squad quit the team after a tweet on the Dawgs' official Twitter account was sent by their general manager to US President Donald Trump about players standing for the national anthem. The players formed a new NPF team, called 'This Is Us', with the goal of raising awareness about racial injustice. "The more we talked about it, the angrier I got, and I finally just said, 'I'm done, I'm not going to wear this jersey'. We were used as pawns in a political post, and that's not okay." (thisisussoftball.com, 01 Oct 2020; yahoo.com, 14 Jun 2020; nytimes.com, 24 Jun 2020; espn.com, 23 Jun 2020; apnews.com, 23 Jun 2020)

OCCUPATION AND COACHING
She works as a realtor in Texas, United States of America. She is also the director of pitching performance at Bombers Fastpitch in New Braunfels, TX and a board member for Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities [RBI] in Austin. From June 2014 to May 2020 she was an associate head coach of the Texas State Bobcats softball team. She first joined Texas State as an assistant coach in 2014, after spending three seasons as an assistant coach at St. Edwards University. She also served as a student assistant coach at the University of Texas in 2007 while finishing her undergraduate degree, before serving as an assistant coach at DePaul University from 2008 to 2010. In 2015 she earned a master's degree in positive coaching from the University of Missouri. (Instagram profile, 09 Jan 2019; txstatebobcats.com, 01 Jan 2019; usssapride.com, 01 Jun 2015; Twitter profile, 16 Apr 2021; LinkedIn profile, 01 Nov 2020; si.com, 18 Mar 2021)

NPF DRAFT
She was the number one pick in the 2006 National Pro Fastpitch [NPF] Draft. (texassports.com, 29 Sep 2020)

She was the youngest member of the US Olympic team that won a gold medal at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, and was the oldest member of the US team named to compete at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. At the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021 she will become the third-oldest softballer to represent the US team at the Games, behind Dot Richardson and Sheila Cornell-Douty who both competed at the 2000 Games in Sydney. (SportsDeskOnline, 01 Jan 2019)

During her time playing for the University of Texas she became the first athlete to win USA Softball's National Collegiate Player of the Year award three times, which she achieved in 2003, 2005 and 2006. (txstatebobcats.com, 01 Jan 2019; teamusa.org, 01 Jan 2010)