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Jess Clements: UCLA & Cal Poly Star on Identity, Pressure & Her Dad's Letters | Out of Left Field cover art

Jess Clements: UCLA & Cal Poly Star on Identity, Pressure & Her Dad's Letters | Out of Left Field

Jess Clements: UCLA & Cal Poly Star on Identity, Pressure & Her Dad's Letters | Out of Left Field

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Jess Clements — UCLA & Cal Poly outfielder and AUSL Chicago Bandits rookie — joins Out of Left Field for a raw, honest conversation about identity beyond the sport, processing disappointment as a pro, the dad letters that shaped her, and what makes the AUSL culture so special. Filmed in Chicago on the OLF Summer of Softball nationwide tour. ▶️ SUBSCRIBE for more long-form athlete storytelling! ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ IN THIS EPISODE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ - From Salinas, CA to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo — agriculture major turned softball star - Why she entered the transfer portal & chose UCLA for her fifth year - Earning her master's in coaching & leadership while playing pro - Being a "learner": where her curiosity and competitiveness come from - Tying self-worth to performance — and learning to let go - The autograph debate: athletes are people, not just performers - Her dad's daily emails from birth, printed in binders she still keeps - Quitting pitching (and the letter that set her free) - Playing up with older girls, isolation & finding your support system - Processing disappointment & pressure as a pro right now - How a veteran teammate's words grounded her mid-slump - What makes the AUSL bond and culture genuinely different ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ TIMESTAMPS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 00:00 Intro — On the green in Chicago 00:36 Jess's story: Salinas, Cal Poly & UCLA 01:12 Pursuing a master's while playing pro 03:24 Where the hunger to learn comes from 04:14 Bringing a learner's mindset to softball 05:30 What Cal Poly taught her 06:22 Identity beyond the sport & the autograph debate 09:08 Serving others as a character trait 09:48 Her dad's influence & the daily email letters 12:10 What those letters mean to her now 12:18 Quitting pitching — the email that freed her 13:16 Softball dads & playing up with older girls 14:11 Advice to her younger, isolated self 15:50 Processing disappointment as a pro 17:28 Who she leans on right now 18:18 The AUSL vets, rookies & a teammate's reminder 19:43 Why the AUSL culture matters for women's sports ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT JESS CLEMENTS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Jessica "Jess" Clements (#5) is an outfielder for the AUSL Chicago Bandits, drafted in the 2025 allocation draft. A Salinas, California native, she starred at Cal Poly — leaving as the program's career batting average leader (.414) and the 2022 Big West Freshman Field Player of the Year — before transferring to UCLA, where she was a key bat on the Bruins' Women's College World Series run. She was the 2024 Big West Conference Player of the Year and a three-time NFCA West All-Region selection, and earned her master's in coaching and leadership through UCLA's John Wooden program. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT OUT OF LEFT FIELD ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Out of Left Field (OLF) is an independent softball podcast and media platform built on long-form athlete storytelling — going beyond the box score to the people behind the game. Hosted by Abby Alonzo. #OutOfLeftField #JessClements #AUSL #ChicagoBandits #Softball #UCLASoftball #CalPoly #WomensSports #ProSoftball #SoftballPodcast
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