Softball star Danielle Lawrie reveals what winning an Olympic medal truly means
By Charlotte Wilder
FOX Sports Columnist
Danielle Lawrie’s daughter, Maddie, couldn’t sit still as she kept her eyes on the TV, watching her mom in the circle.
Lawrie was trying to closing out Team Canada’s last game in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and she had to get two more outs to come home with a medal. If she didn’t, Canada would place fourth and it would be a repeat of 2008, the last time both Lawrie and softball were in the Olympics.
Thousands and thousands of miles across the world, Maddie, 7, was squirming around on an ottoman next to her 4-year-old sister, Audrey, across the room from their father, Drew Locke, and surrounded by Lawrie’s best friends in their hometown near Seattle.
"Which one’s Mama?" Audrey asked. The shot cut to Team Canada veteran Jenn Salling, who ended up batting .600 in this tournament. Audrey pointed: "There’s Jenny!"
"One more then I’m screaming!," Maddie said, with one out to go.
"Why are you going to scream?" Lawrie’s friend asked, filming Maddie on her cell phone.
"Because my mom will win A BRONZE MEDAL!!!," Maddie yelled, almost doing a split before she fell to the ground.
Lawrie threw a perfect strike to beat Mexico and secure the Bronze. Maddie exploded, jumping up and down, and — yes — screaming, her cheeks red and her ponytail swinging as she covered her face with her hands. She ran to Locke and leapt into his arms.
Everyone in that room hadn’t seen Lawrie in 73 days. This win was as much theirs as hers. Lawrie’s family has been her support team at home for the past four years, ever since she came out of retirement at the age of 30 to chase her Olympic dream.
In that last strikeout, Maddie and Audrey saw their mom write the final chapter of her storied playing career.
But they also saw an athlete at the height of her powers put her ambition first to prove that individual achievement is possible for women, no matter how hard. They saw one of the best players of all time bring home the first medal Canadian softball has ever won. They saw the payoff of the sacrifices that they and Lawrie had made for glory.
Most of all, they saw possibility.
"That was the moment that I wanted [them] to be able to witness in person," said Lawrie, knowing it wouldn't be possible for her family to be in Japan due to COVID-19 protocols. "So it was nice to be able to see that video and know Maddie definitely knew what was up this week."
After getting the final out to clinch Canada's bronze medal, Danielle Lawrie realized her (and her family's) Olympic dream. (Photo by Koji Watanabe/Getty Images)
Lawrie and I spoke the day after she returned to Washington from Tokyo. She was at the pool with Maddie and Audrey. Locke had to leave that day for a business trip, so it was Mom's turn to take care of the girls by herself for the first time in a while.
I could hear kids splashing around in the background, those happy cries of summer that are always punctuated by parents in the background yelling, "No running!"
The scene sounded shockingly normal, the complete opposite of Lawrie’s past few months.
"It was weird coming back yesterday, and being like, wait, I have to sleep with someone in my bed now?" Lawrie said. "But it's just nice to be done with all of it, honestly. It was amazing, but it's nice to know I don't have to go to the weight room unless I want to. I can have a beer if I want to."
I’ve talked to Lawrie every other week since February, when her training for the Olympics kicked into high gear and took her away from her family for months at a time. I wrote about everything she has been through in a story that published before the softball competition began.
She pushed her body to its limits and tested her mental ability to deal with the stress and pressure that comes with representing her country on the biggest global stage.
Through it all, Lawrie’s kids have been her guiding light. She didn’t feel like she could tell them they can do anything they set their minds to if she hadn’t followed her heart and done the same.
Coming home was Lawrie’s landing spot, the safe place where she could finally climb off of the roller-coaster and hang up her cleats once and for all. But her dedication was worth it, and it’s very hard not to tear up at the video of her kids greeting her at the airport.
Maddie now wants to wear the medal all the time — Lawrie has to take it away so it’s not slung around Maddie’s neck when she jumps in the pool. Audrey keeps calling it a gold instead of a bronze because, in her words, "It looks like gold."
"A lot of Olympians go through these kinds of weird depressions after the Olympics," Lawrie said. "Because they're doing something so huge, then they just go back to real life right away. I did have that feeling after 2018 and the world championships.
"But I don't feel that now. I was ready to hang them up."
After giving it her all and grinding it out — training through the COVID year by herself, running in the Florida heat, sleeping on uncomfortable dorm-room beds in Illinois, wrestling with loneliness and physical exhaustion — Lawrie took that emotional weight and channeled it into wins.
She finished her career the exact same way she won the University of Washington its first and only softball national title in 2009 — the score in the last inning was 3-2, and Lawrie struck out the last batter to win the game.
That bronze victory wasn’t easy, because the loss that came before it was crushing. Canada fell to Japan 1-0 in the second-to-last round and knew it wouldn’t be playing for a gold medal.
"That hurt so bad," Lawrie said. "It felt like one of the worst losses that we've ever faced as a team, and that I've had personally. We put so much pressure on ourselves to excel in this game. But it is just a game."
After the Japan game, Lawrie stepped out of the locker room and called Locke, who helped her put the loss into perspective by reminding her how hard she’d worked, and how proud he and their kids were of her. That call helped Lawrie focus on the opportunity to win a bronze, and the task at hand became regrouping as a team so they could all walk away from the games with a medal.
Lawrie’s nightmare was getting off the plane back home without anything to show for the blood, sweat and tears she’d poured into the last four years. She didn’t want to face her daughters without hardware to represent what she’d done.
The pressure Olympians face has been discussed a lot recently, especially since gymnast Simone Biles decided not to compete in the team and individual all-around competitions because of vertigo and the stress of being the greatest of all time. She felt the weight of global exceptions on her shoulders — she was no longer a human in the eyes of the world. She was perfect. It was a forgone conclusion that she would bring home many golds.
Except that she is human. And Lawrie says no one can understand what it’s like to be in the headspace of an Olympian unless they’ve done it.
"People think they should have an opinion about it, but realistically, what anyone else cares about someone's mental health does not matter," she said. "And what I realized is that people don't see what goes on behind the scenes. People don't know what you truly give to be elite because they're not willing to do it.
"And it's hard, because when you're selected to represent your country, you take on the great responsibility of wanting to do something special. But at the end of the day, if we're not in the right headspace, or we cannot take care of ourselves, we're not doing our country any favors."
Lawrie prioritized her mental health above all else during these games, and leaned on her teammates for support.
The 2008 Games were a horrible experience for her — she wanted the ball more than she wanted to be a good teammate, and she could tell some of the women on that team didn’t like her ("I was a selfish kid at times," she said). After the fourth place finish 13 years ago, her teammates locked her out of her room.
So while Lawrie wanted to do this for her kids, she also wanted to do it for herself and her team. She wanted redemption, and she got it — on the field and off.
"It was significantly different from 2008," Lawrie said. "One of our core team values is love. And the amount of people who watched said it looked like we were a unit, a collective, that we were all about each other.
"And we really were. I haven't been a part of another selfless group like that before. This team has been together for well over a hundred-and-something days, and we still want to be around each other and enjoy each other's company. It was night and day from ’08."
Team Canada was an extremely tight unit as it earned the bronze medal in Yokohama, Japan. (Photo by Koji Watanabe/Getty Images)
It was hard for everyone to be away from their families, so they became each others'. One of the players brought a Nespresso machine so everyone would have enough coffee. Lawrie and Salling, Lawrie’s best friend on the team, traded TikToks to cheer each other up.
The entire team talked each other through challenging times — even people jockeying for spots, like pitchers Lawrie and Sarah Groenewegen. The two aces realized competing against each other took away from the common goal. When they took the field, they knew they’d done everything they could in training. They just had to trust each other.
"There's already an insane amount of pressure," Lawrie said. "But the calm to the storm for me was truly knowing that we have prepared to the best of our ability. So you're going to lay your head down on your pillow the night before a game knowing that you're as ready as possible. And you’ll have butterflies. But that doesn't mean they're the ones who stab you saying. 'You're not prepared for the moment.'"
For all the athletes, this experience is obviously different from past Olympics. There are no fans in the stands and strict COVID protocols. Lawrie and her team didn’t socialize with other Olympians at all — they stuck close together in their own little bubble.
It wasn’t worth risking a positive COVID test, because once your result isn’t negative, you’re going home. Lawrie felt bad for her teammates who hadn’t been to the Olympics before, but at the end of the day, at least they got there. And they did what they came to do.
Lawrie says she couldn’t have done it without her husband and their support system of friends and paid-for childcare back home. It’s something she doesn’t take for granted, and something that shouldn’t be so rare.
"It made me realize how lucky I am for this family," Lawrie said. "To have that support? Not a lot of men would accept this. Not a lot of men are letting their wives peace out for 70-plus days to do something like this. I hit the jackpot."
Lawrie is going on vacation with her family next week, and in about a month she’ll spend weekends in the fall commentating on softball for the Athletes Unlimited league. After being away from her family for 73 days, three or four days at a time will be manageable.
For now, with such a wild career under her belt, Lawrie can hang up her cleats with a sense of peace. There are no loose narrative threads.
"I remember the heartbreak from 2008, and coming in fourth place," she said. "Getting to do this again 13 years later and getting to hit up the podium?
"There's definitely not many stories that end this way. It was fitting that the stars aligned."
Charlotte Wilder is a general columnist and cohost of "The People's Sports Podcast" for FOX Sports. She's honored to represent the constantly neglected Boston area in sports media, loves talking to sports fans about their feelings and is happiest eating a hotdog in a ballpark or nachos in a stadium. Follow her on Twitter @TheWilderThings.
