She compiled an 82-20 record at Oklahoma State, earned All-American honors ten times between 1989 and 1998, and won the Bertha Tickey Award as the outstanding pitcher at the Women's Major Fast Pitch National Championship four times. Beginning in 1993 she played professionally in Japan for Toyota Shokki for sixteen seasons, winning eight league championships and eight MVP awards. She won two Olympic gold medals with Team USA, in Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000, and competed in three ISF World Championships. Her game was movement, location, and the ability to read a hitter and adjust mid-at-bat, a less visible skill set than pure velocity but no less effective at the highest level. She was one of the most decorated softball players of her generation, on any continent.

After retiring she joined ESPN as a softball analyst and became one of the most prominent broadcast voices in the sport, expanding its visibility during a period when women's softball was navigating the loss of its Olympic platform. She has been open about her identity as a gay athlete, coming out in a sport and an era where that carried professional risk, and has spoken about what it meant for younger players watching. The arc of her career, from a pole on the side of a road at eighteen to the broadcast booth, is the story of someone who refused every version of the ending that wasn't hers to write.