Patty Cardenas is one of the rising US Latin Athletes who will participate in the Beijing Olympics 2008. She has been named by Sports Illustrated in Spanish [along with Shawn Estrada, Andrea Duran, Nancy Rios, Crystal Bustos, Vicky Galindo, and Jessica Mendoza as the people to watch during the Beijing Olympics.
Patty Cardenas was born on the 19th of August 1984 and was majoring in Sociology when she started her career with the United States Women’s National Water Polo Team. She has been the winner of the Gold Medal in the following competitions: 2006 FINA Water Polo World League in Cosenza, 2007 FINA Water Polo World League in Montreal, 2007 Pan American Games, and the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne. Many people comment about the meteoric rise of Patty Cardenas but do not know how she does it. Here is the big information about Patty Cardenas.
Patty Cardenas excelled in Water Polo before her debut with the United States Women’s National Water Polo Team. When she was a student at Bell Gardens High School, her accomplishments were the following: Four straight CIF Division III championships, three-time first-team All-American, and being named CIF Co-MVP as a junior and senior. During her high school period, her team went 117-3 from 1999-2002. Patty Cardenas also played for Commerce, and won Junior Olympic titles from 1997 to 1999 and Junior Nationals from 1996 to 1998.
After graduating from high school, Patty Cardenas attended Golden West College where she won the 2003 All-Southern California Co-MVP, the 2002 State Championship, and was named the California Community College MVP and Community College Southern California MVP for the year 2002. Patty Cardenas transferred from Golden West College to the University of Southern California [USC] where she made a big impact. The year 2006 in USC was the year of Patty Cardenas. Patty Cardenas became the USC’s third leading scorer with 40 goals, which included 15 multiple-goal games, a career-high four goals in a Feb. 12 win over UCLA in the Stanford Tournament championship and scoring within a total of 23 games for the Trojans. For her efforts, Patty Cardenas was named MPSF Player of the Week and received the All-American honorable mention.
Another factor that has helped Patty Cardenas in her professional success is the ability to be proactive when it comes to family. For Patty Cardenas, family always comes first and when she spends time with her family. I hope Patty Cardenas wins a Gold Medal in the Beijing Olympics. In a world where only those who are in sports receive negative publicity, she is a positive ray of hope.
El Noticiero de Alvarez Galloso 
What I am trying to do is promote the US Olympic Teams including Water Polo. I am also promoting the US Latinos that are competing in the Beijing 2008 Olympics for the USA. My reason is that the majority of athletes that are great people do not receive publicity while those who are positive for use of prohibited substances receive publicity. I support Patty Cardenas and I wish her the best.
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Kudos for writing this piece on a great water polo player and a wonderful human being as well. As anybody that knows this lovely lady will attest, Patty is a consummate professional in the sport of Water Polo and is a huge Role Model for many Latin young people including my own 2 girls.
Only those close to Patty know a little more about what she had to go through to make the USA Olympic Team. Patty is a very modest person and I am not surprised that not much has been written about her story. I believe a lot of this is also due to Patty sharing the spotlight with one of the best women’s water polo players in the world who hails from the same city and club team as her, Brenda Villa. I don’t mean to take anything away from Brenda she deserves all the publicity she is getting, she has certainly earned it.
My family has known Patty and her family for about ten years now and I have to say, she is the best player we have seen and also one of the nicest girls we have known in the program. Her story is truly inspiring and I believe it deserves to be told.
After an awesome High School career at Bell Gardens in which her team only lost 3 games in four years and also won a CIF high school record 90+ consecutive games at one point, Patty did not go on to get the big Div. I Scholarship like many other players of her caliber did. She went on to play at Golden West College and did very well there winning a State Championship and a SoCal CC MVP award.
After a couple of years of not playing Collegiate water polo or playing for any of the USA National teams, a lot of people, including myself, thought that Patty’s water polo playing career had probably been finished.
During her time out of water polo Patty worked really hard at getting her academic courses in line to attend the College of her dreams, University of Southern California. Once there, Patty made an instant impact on the team making the staring line up of a USC team that was ranked # 1 in the nation at the time. She continued to have a very successful two seasons at USC and became one of the main scorers on the team by her Senior year.
After many years away from the USA National team pipeline, Patty was selected to the USA Senior team in an open try-out in 2006 and she went on to help team USA win major International tournaments including the 2006 & 2007 World Championships and an unprecedented undefeated year in International competition in 2007.
As I mentioned before, Patty’s story is very inspiring to me and all my family and seeing her get to the Olympic stage after all that she went through is just one example of what people can accomplish by believing in themselves and being determined to follow their dreams no matter what the cost.
Congratulations Patty for making this dream come true for you and for all of us who are inspired by you hard work and dedication to your Sport.
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I would like to thank you for your comments. I wanted to write about Patty Cardenas because her story deserves to be told. For her personality off and on the field, she deserves to be a Gold Medal Winner. In fact, via my blog; I am willing to interview her when she returns from the Beijing Olympics when she has free time.
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