She was a pitcher and a hitter, elite at both at the same time, which almost never happens in softball. She won national championships with UCLA in 1990 and 1992, was named First-Team All-America all four years, and became the first softball player to win the Honda-Broderick Cup as the country's outstanding collegiate woman athlete. She carried that same self-driven intensity into the Olympics, starting in all three gold-medal games that gave Team USA consecutive titles in 1996, 2000, and 2004. Along the way she set Olympic records for strikeouts in a single game and batting average in a single tournament, doing damage from the circle and the batter's box in the same run of games. Throughout, she was one of the most visible Latina athletes in a sport that had rarely produced a star at her level from that community, and she has spoken directly about carrying that weight, about knowing her performance meant something to people watching who had not seen themselves represented at the top of the sport before.

She has spent nearly three decades on the UCLA coaching staff, now in her fourth season as associate head coach after years developing the program's pitchers, her focus shifted to hitters, infielders, and recruiting. UCLA has won five national championships during her tenure. She is also general manager of the Utah Talons in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, where she built the roster that went 18–6 and won the league's inaugural championship in 2025, and returned for 2026 to shape the team defending that title. She married former UCLA athlete Charles Smith, and they have two sons together. She was never given the drive that built her career. She built it herself, and then spent the rest of her life making room for the players who would come after her because of it.