Having played tennis at the University of Miami, Elsa Mendoza encouraged her three sons to play sports and work hard academically.
She urged her eldest Fernando to keep believing despite repeatedly being overlooked, beginning with his first team at nine years old, when he was initially fourth-choice quarterback.
Coming out of high school, he was ranked 2,149th in the class of 2022 – and the 140th quarterback.
He had to wait until late in the recruiting process to receive his only offer from a Power Five school – the top level of college football – but Elsa insisted it would come.
In 2024, Fernando launched a fundraising campaign, external for the National MS Society to honour his mother’s “strength and positivity”. She had told her boys that she has MS in 2020, when her condition deteriorated after contracting Covid.
In an open letter to Fernando, external on The Players’ Tribune, days before the Heisman Trophy ceremony in December, she wrote that “one of the biggest issues I had to overcome as my condition first worsened wasn’t just the condition itself. It was the embarrassment”.
But she added “you’ve never once looked away. You’ve never once treated me like I’m embarrassing, or deficient, or anything other than someone you love and are standing by”.
That became evident to a national audience last season after Fernando transferred to Indiana, where his younger brother Alberto was already on the roster.
As they led the Hoosiers to their first national championship, they warmed the hearts of American sport fans by making sure their mother was part of the celebrations, with Fernando frequently highlighting her impact on his career.
“To see her fight and overcome the struggle with the optimism that she has, she’s been a great role model,” he said.