Dejah Mulipola: From Youngest to Veteran
Dejah Mulipola has homered twice this week as the United States chases a place in next year’s Softball World Cup Finals. The bigger change is that Team USA’s catcher is now the veteran.
Dejah Mulipola hit a home run Sunday night at Devon Park in Oklahoma City. The United States beat the Netherlands 8-0, and the game ended in the fifth inning. That is the run rule, which stops a softball game once one side leads by enough. It was the third game in two days the Americans had ended early that way.
Mulipola catches for Team USA. At 28, she is also the player everyone else on this roster has started to look at differently.
The résumé she brought to Oklahoma City starts with an Olympic silver medal
Mulipola won an Olympic silver medal at Tokyo in 2021. Before that, she caught at the University of Arizona, where she won two NFCA Catcher of the Year awards and the 2019 Johnny Bench Award.
Mulipola now catches for the Texas Volts, one of the six clubs in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, where the country’s professionals play each summer. Last month she won another trophy in this same Oklahoma City ballpark, at a different tournament: defensive most valuable player of the USA Softball International Cup.
Five years after Tokyo, she is the veteran. The World Baseball Softball Confederation runs this tournament, and this week it described her as one of the more experienced players on a young United States team. She has taken on a leadership role because of it.
She noticed it only recently herself. “That’s so crazy that you bring that up,” she told the WBSC, “because I just realised the other day that I am one of the vets.” In Tokyo she had been one of the three youngest players in the room. It has, she said, come full circle.
We wrote about Mulipola in July, when USA Softball named her to this 16-player roster.
The United States has not needed a full game yet
| Day | Opponent | Score | Innings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sat, Sept 12 | Mexico | 11-0 | 4 |
| Sun, Sept 13 | Brazil | 17-0 | 4 |
| Sun, Sept 13 | Netherlands | 8-0 | 5 |
Mulipola homered and drove in two against Mexico on Saturday. Then against the Netherlands she homered again.
In between, her teammates ran up the rest of it. Megan Grant hit a grand slam and drove in seven against Brazil. Jayda Coleman hit the shot that pushed the Netherlands game past the run-rule line. In the circle, Rachel Garcia threw three hitless innings and Montana Fouts struck out eight.
Three games, three wins, and not one of them lasted seven innings.
None of it is settled, and the trophy is not here to win. This is the World Cup’s group stage, the third and last one after Prague in June and Lima in July. What is on the table is a ticket to the Finals next April in Redcliffe, Australia.
Six teams are here: Brazil, China, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the host United States. They play a single round robin through Tuesday, and the top four advance to play-offs on Wednesday.
Two of them go straight to Redcliffe. One more place is still open across all three groups, a wild card for the best third-place finisher, and this week decides that as well.
The two home runs are the easiest part of Mulipola’s week to see. Catching is the part that never shows up in a box score at all.
The team looks to the catcher because of where she stands, not how long she has been there
Mulipola did not become the leader of this squad by outlasting anybody. She plays the position that has to know things.
Four different pitchers worked those three games. Garcia and Alexis Kilfoyl handled Mexico, Kelly Maxwell shut out Brazil, and Fouts took the Netherlands. A staff turns over that fast at a tournament, and somebody has to know all of them.
The catcher is the only player on the field looking back at everybody else. She learns a whole pitching staff instead of one arm. She learns what each of them loses first when the innings pile up. She watches what the other dugout has been chasing all game, and what it has stopped chasing.
So whoever is holding all of that will end up leading, whether or not anyone hands her the job. Mulipola has been holding it since she was the youngest one in the room, and now she is one of the older players in it.
Softball returns to the Olympic program at Los Angeles in 2028, and the players in Oklahoma City this week are the ones building toward it.
That team is not finished being picked. Somebody on it is 12 years old right now, squatting behind a plate on a Tuesday, learning her pitcher’s face.
The guild of catchers has room in it, and the way in is the same for everyone: get behind the plate, learn the people in front of you, and start being the one they ask.
Try this at your next practice
- The one-sentence scouting report. Before practice, write one sentence about every pitcher you catch. Name her best pitch, and name the first thing that slips when she gets tired. Then watch for it in the next game. You will be wrong about somebody, and that is how you learn her.
- The ten-second mound visit. Put a timer on it. Walk out, say one thing, walk back. One thing, not three. A tired pitcher can hold one idea, and your job is to pick which one it is.
- Call the situation out loud. For one full inning, say the outs, the runners and where the play goes before every single pitch. Be the loudest voice on the field. It feels strange for about four pitches, and then your infield starts moving before you finish the sentence.
Sources: USA Collects 3 Run-Rule Victories in WBSC Women’s Softball World Cup Oklahoma City Group (Sports Illustrated) · Dejah Mulipola embraces new leadership role as USA build towards LA28 (WBSC) · Team USA Opens with Win in WBSC Women’s Softball World Cup 2026 Group Oklahoma City (Line Drive Media) · Women’s Softball World Cup Group Oklahoma City: Schedule, format and what’s at stake (WBSC) · China, USA remain unbeaten after Day 2 wins (WBSC).