Prior to first pitch at Nationals Park on a sun-soaked D.C. summer day, George Washington University alumna Elana Meyers Taylor stood on the diamond, reflecting on how her own career on the softball diamond, not far from where she was standing, launched a career that now has her tied as the most decorated American woman ever in the Winter Olympics.

"The dream of being an Olympian started at the age of nine," Meyers Taylor remembered. "I thought it would be in softball and I thought it would come right out of GW, but even though I transitioned to bobsled after leaving GW, the reason my career there was so important was because it formed me as an athlete.

"It taught me how to fight for things. My first season at GW - the first year we had a team - we were 3-and-something. It was a really, really difficult year, but that's what formed me as an athlete. That's what taught me how to fight, how to compete, and what the difference is between just being out there to be there and have fun, versus going out there to go win something. We started at that 3-and-something record and had made the A10 Tournament by the time I finished my career. To be a part of that, forming the team and everything that came with that, those are the same skills I took into bobsled. That's what enabled me to win any medal, let alone a gold medal."

Now, alongside other D.C. sports icons like W.T. Woodson High School and Duke University alumnus Tommy Amaker; Washington Mystics two-time WNBA MVP, seven-time WNBA All-Star and WNBA Champion Elena Delle Donne; four-time NFL Pro Bowler and Super Bowl XXXIV Champion and member of the Washington football team London Fletcher; legendary Maryland high school football coach Al Thomas; and the 2001-02 NCAA Men's Basketball National Champions from the University of Maryland, Meyers Taylor added another accolade to a glittering trophy case.

Cited for her supremacy on the ice, she previously enjoyed a collegiate career that has her among GW's greatest-ever athletes and Monumental Alumni. Inducted into the GW Athletic Hall of Fame in 2014, she was the program's first player to have their jersey retired. The university later presented Meyers Taylor with an honorary doctorate in 2018 and the President's Medal in 2022 when she was the Keynote Speaker at Commencement on the Mall. In five different Winter Olympics, she has won six medals, including a gold medal in the Monobob event at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan.

With husband and fellow Olympic bobsledder, Nic, alongside taking care of their two young boys, Nico and Noah, sitting by the third base line, Meyers Taylor took home Sunday one more honor, one of the few she hadn't already earned.