¡Punto Final! El Deporte Me Trajo a Casa

(Sports Brought Me Home)

By Patty Medina | Co-Founder, Latinx En Athletics

I was about eight years old when my family crossed the border from Sonora, Mexico, into the United States. I didn’t know the language. I didn’t know the culture. I didn’t know who I was supposed to become in this new place. What I did know - what I had always known - was how to play sports and compete.

Back home, sports were our family language. I grew up playing alongside my tíos in the open spaces of San Miguelito, Sonora, running, laughing, competing, belonging. El deporte wasn’t just a game. It was how we communicated, how we connected. How we knew we were loved. When I arrived in San Diego, sports became something even more essential: my bridge. In a country where I didn’t yet speak the language, a ball didn’t need translation. A court or field didn’t ask about my citizenship. A team didn’t care how long I’d been here - only what I could contribute to the team. For a little immigrant girl trying to find her footing in a foreign country, sports gave me the one thing I needed most: un lugar donde pertenecer. Somewhere to belong.

But here’s what nobody tells you about growing up Mexicana in that era: I came from a country that just made history by electing its first female president and, yet, when I was coming up, women in power were almost invisible. No women on the sideline. No women in the front office. No women talking about sports. No women making decisions about the games we played or the teams we loved. I didn’t see myself in leadership, so it was hard to believe I could lead.

I never stopped competing, though. I played four sports through high school, competed in college, and somewhere along the way made a decision that would shape everything: I didn’t just want to play the game. I wanted to influence it, to contribute to it and to build it, para las que vienen detrás. For the ones coming behind me.

In 2016, I became a college head coach, and I learned that I was the only Mexico-born woman head coach at any collegiate level in the entire country. Not one of a few. La única. The only one. I sat with that truth for a long time. It didn’t feel like a milestone to celebrate. It felt like a door that had been nearly shut, and

I had barely gotten my foot through it. I kept asking myself: ¿Y las demás? Where are the rest of us?

That question is what drives everything I do today. Now, as one of the highest-ranking Latinas at American University, and as co-founder of Latinx En Athletics, I work every day to create what in sports we call a “See Her, Be Her Moments” - the experiences I didn’t have growing up, where a Mexicana or Latina sees herself reflected in a position of power and thinks, “Yo también puedo.” That could be me. I want to be for other women what I wished I’d had: proof that we belong at every table, in every room, with any and every title.

The future of sports for Latinas is not just about more of us playing, coaching, or officiating. It’s about more of us leading and owning. It’s about the girl in Mexico, or from South Bay San Diego, or the border towns in between, seeing herself reflected in the front office and C-Suites and knowing she doesn’t have to wait for permission.

El deporte me trajo a casa. Sports brought me home, and now it is my life’s work to hold that door open, wide, for every Latina coming behind me. Para que ella también se vea. Para que ella también sea. So she can see herself. So she can be herself.

— Punto final. Period!