Jessica Mendoza has been named as one of the voices of ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball coverage, joining newcomer Aaron Boone and play-by-play man Dan Shulman in the booth.

Mendoza, a former Olympic softball star, joined the Sunday Night booth late last season after Curt Schilling was suspended. She seized the opportunity and was rewarded Wednesday when the network announced its new team.

"It's just crazy when I look back, and literally less than six months ago I had no idea what was going to happen after the Monday night games," Mendoza told the Associated Press.

Mendoza, 35, joined ESPN in 2007 after a softball career at Stanford and in the Olympics. She didn't give much thought to calling baseball until the following year, when John Kruk, an established Major League Baseball commentator, took part in Women's College World Series coverage.

Mendoza saw how knowledge of one sport could translate to the other. Still, she acknowledged, historically there was just "one-way traffic" — her father, a baseball coach, would guide her softball teams, but a woman typically wouldn't instruct baseball players.

She later did some sideline reporting on men's sports and studio work for "Baseball Tonight." In June, Mendoza became the first female game analyst for a men's College World Series telecast.

On Aug. 24, 2015, she called the Monday night matchup between the Cardinalsand Diamondbacks. Almost a week later, after another host was pulled from the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast, ESPN replaced him with Mendoza.

That night, the Cubs' Jake Arrieta made history that night by no-hitting theDodgers. Mendoza made history after her debut earned rave reviews, sticking on Sunday night the rest of the season and becoming the first female analyst to call a nationally televised MLB playoff game when she worked the AL wild-card matchup.

John Wildhack, ESPN's executive vice president for programming and production, said Mendoza "seized the moment" when she got an opportunity. He told the Associated Press that as he talked to others in the industry about Mendoza's performance, he realized: "Wow, this was not just good. This was really, really, really good."

She and Boone will be part of the fifth different analyst team in six seasons for Sunday Night Baseball since Jon Miller and Joe Morgan departed after 21 years in 2010 — partly because Bobby Valentine and Terry Francona each left the booth to return to managing.

The story above is adapted from the original version posted on the ESPN website.