The USA Softball Women’s National Team captured its third World Cup title last night by defeating Australia 3-1. Grand marshals for the victory parade consisted of an impressive STACKlete trio: Monica Abbott, Cat Osterman and Lauren Lappin.

Abbott dominated the ladies from down under with 11 whiffs in just over five innings. Osterman, rocking out her Under Armour headband, sealed the deal with three punchouts to close the game. To learn how these skilled pitchers—who rank 1st and 2nd respectively on the NCAA career strikeout list—honed their craft, check out Abbott* and Osterman’s STACK TV athlete pages.

*Wanna know why Abbott is one of the best in the world? Check out this Kneeling Physioball Throw she performed during my shoot with her at the D1 Sports Training Facility in Knoxville, Tenn. I challenge any athlete, male or female, to perfect this difficult drill. On a lighter note, she might be one of the funniest athletes I’ve ever interviewed, though most of that footage hit the editing room floor.

Offensively, Lappin ignited the squad with a fence-clearing shot in the bottom of the third inning. We captured Lappin’s intense weight room training in Florida as she prepared for the ’08 Olympic Games in Beijing. The former Stanford superstar hit the weights hard and was then gracious enough to sit down with us to answer a few questions (yours truly might have went over the allotted time, thus making the rest of the team wait on the bus until the interview was complete).

One final note: We’ve received a ton of great questions so far for the first edition of Friday Mailbag (also, if you’re creative, feel free to send me some names for the mailbag since it’s a little too generic for my tastes right now). Keep the questions coming by submitting them here, and we’ll post the first mailbag Q&A session next Friday.

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