María Elena Batista

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María Elena "Mari" Batista currently is a sports administrator in Puerto Rico. As the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico's Director of Sports and Recreation since January, 2001, she helped revive the previously underused and dilapidated Hiram Bithorn Stadium, attracting MLB's Opening Day Game in 2001, twenty-two yearly home games of the now defunct Montreal Expos (now known as the Washington Nationals) in 2003 and 2004, and the 2006 World Baseball Classic games. In the summer of 2006 she brought NBA's "Basketball without Borders" program to San Juan. In September 2006, Mayor Jorge Santini inaugurated the San Juan Municipal Sports Magnet School. In December 2006, another of her projects, the $28 million San Juan Natatorium opened to the public and attracted winter training from over 10 stateside college swim teams, including the United States Military Academy. In March 2007 she personally began a campaign to rescue low-income youths who were dangerously diving off city bridges into polluted waters and introducing them to the diving facilities at the new Natatorium.

In July 2007, the first phase of San Juan's Golf complex and San Juan Golf Academy, a reuse of the city's former sanitary landfill, opened to the public. The first phase includes a state-of-the-art Golf Academy and a driving range atop the former landfill with 360 degree views of the capital city. Batista has reportedly begun recruiting low-income children to begin golf training.

Prior to her career as a sports administrator, she was a competitive swimmer, having represented Puerto Rico in several Central American and Caribbean Games, Pan American Games and the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. After graduating from Puerto Rico's Sacred Heart University in 1994, she served as the Sports Director of Puerto Rico's Department of Education Sports Magnet School, located at the Puerto Rico Olympic Committee training facilities in Salinas, Puerto Rico, obtained an MBA and began teaching business at Turabo University in Caguas, Puerto Rico. She is the daughter of former Superior Court Judge Elpidio Batista, who served a stint as President of the Puerto Rico Baseball Winter League, is married to Senate President Kenneth McClintock and is the mother of two children.

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