As if life in the travel ball circuit weren't difficult enough, softball player Lilly Travieso discovered that it could be especially tough on Latina athletes in her Southern California community. The quest to land a college scholarship was made all the more complicated with the added cultural and financial challenges involved.
Travieso, who's from Burbank, California, and her family sought a way to level the playing field for girls who excelled in sports and in the classroom, leading her to create the ELLA Sports Foundation four years ago with the help of her family. Fittingly, ELLA -- an acronym for Empowering Leadership in Latina Athletes -- is also Spanish for "her."
"Understanding the disparities in my community, growing up playing softball and playing sports really inspired me to create ELLA with my mom," Travieso told ESPN Deportes, which recently profiled the family and the foundation for Hispanic Heritage Month. "And I know my whole sports journey was a family affair. It took a team, especially with getting recruited. So I owe everything to my parents, but they also helped me create this amazing organization that helps to level the playing field in creating opportunities for young Latina athletes."
Travieso, who played third base for Cornell last season, achieved her dream of playing Division I softball when she earned a scholarship to play for the Ivy League school in 2020, the same year ELLA was founded. With the backing of Lilly's father Manny Travieso, she and her mother Patty Godoy-Travieso decided they wanted to help other young Latinas who were facing challenges similar to their own in looking for a scholarship.
The nonprofit ELLA is ambitious in its mission, which is listed on its website: "To support young female Latinas to become leaders of tomorrow through sports and academic excellence." It aims to achieve this through education, training, mentorship and advocacy, although the foundation is not allowed to provide financial help directly to individual athletes because of NCAA rules.
The Traviesos also considered some of the deeply rooted cultural obstacles at play in their community. Some Latino families don't believe girls should play sports, that instead a woman's place is in the home and not the classroom. Others were open to higher education for their children but lamented the exorbitant costs of attending college.
Having gone through the process themselves, Patty and Manny were more than happy to share their experiences through ELLA.
Girls as young as 5 can participate in the foundation and are encouraged to join as many sports as possible. Once they reach their teenage years, the hope is that participants pick a sport and maintain grades good enough to open doors to schools where they can capitalize on college recruiting opportunities.
ELLA seeks to increase its athletes' presence in places where scouts gather and to offer support free of charge to those who reach the college level. Besides organizing camps in multiple sports, the foundation also offers college prep courses as well as training, tutoring and networking opportunities.
"Parents come to me and say, 'They sent me the contract.' I tell them, 'This is good, but you know what? Ask for more money, ask for more help,'" said Manny, who is ELLA's athletic director. "We're with them from beginning to end to help them."
ELLA also wants to make sure that Latina athletes get a piece of the NIL pie. Texas Tech's NiJaree Canady, USA Softball's 2024 College Player of the Year, signed an NIL deal with the school's collective worth over $1 million that is believed to be the highest ever for a player in the sport.
"We're working with a company called NIL Hispanic, to make sure that in some way Latina girls in college can make decent money, now that the NCAA rules have changed," Manny said.
The Travieso family bond was the rock upon which ELLA was eventually formed. It didn't hurt that Patty and Manny, who have four daughters including Lilly, know the unique challenges that girls face in the travel ball system.
"When we started to understand how travel ball worked, how expensive it is, we thought it would be much better if I was the coach, because that way I don't have to pay," Manny said. "We have to find a way to help parents save money and do everything possible to not only have a good team, but above all to be at certain spots where the colleges are so they can see the players."
From the start, ELLA emphasized to its players the importance of good grades in making financial aid possible. That pushed Lilly to study hard, which led her to a private school education and eventually to Cornell.
Lilly, who also grew up playing volleyball and basketball, eventually focused on earning a scholarship to play softball. In her most recent season at Cornell, she earned recognition as a 2024 All-Ivy honorable mention. She led the team batting .330 and had the highest conference average at .390. She also registered a career-high 32 hits and made just eight errors on defense.
Now with a degree in development sociology from Cornell in tow, Lilly's new goal is centered on ELLA's leadership aspect: finding a career in the sports field, particularly in baseball. She has one year of eligibility left because of the pandemic and would like to earn her master's.
Lilly's parents are her principal role models. Patty was born the youngest of seven children in El Salvador. When she was 12, she and her family moved to the United States to escape the clutches of civil war in her home country. She found refuge in her new country playing sports, including softball in high school.
"I felt normal playing," said Patty, a nurse who holds two graduate degrees. "I think it's what saved me, because I would go to practice every day and we would play. I loved putting on that uniform. It was well-worn because they were second-hand."
Manny, who also coaches high school softball in Burbank, left Puerto Rico in 1998 hoping to follow in the footsteps of his parents, who were well-known figures in his homeland's entertainment industry. He would teach Lilly, who played for Puerto Rico's Junior Olympic softball team, all about baseball -- the sport he learned from his Cuban father.
"The time he and I had when we played the sport was worth a million dollars," he said.
For her efforts in putting ELLA together, Lilly received an invitation to the White House last year as part of its first International Day of the Girl festivities. She and Patty were in attendance as First Lady Jill Biden honored the 15 young women who were among the best and brightest that the country had to offer.
"It was amazing, and we were able to learn so much from a lot of young voices leading change throughout the nation," said Lilly, who just a few months later would receive an invitation to visit Vice President Kamala Harris at an event with Billie Jean King honoring female athletes for Women's Month. "After that I was like, 'All right, well, that's the coolest thing I've ever done'."