How a team becomes a family

Two summers ago, Lolo Silver was the leading scorer for the winning U.S. women's water polo team at the FINA World Cup, with 11 goals. A few months later, in February, 2011, she and her mom, Kathy Heddy-Drum, were having lunch. Mom, Lolo said, your left eye looks funny.

Thus began a journey that would envelop the entire U.S. water polo team. Truly, it would help transform the team into a family.

Kathy Heddy-Drum, who herself is an Olympian, a swimmer who finished fifth in the 400 meters at the 1976 Games in Montreal, turned out to have a tumor in her eye, behind her socket. The tumor proved malignant.

Doctors scheduled surgery for last March 25.

As it turned out, Jessica Steffens happened to be living at Kathy's house.

Jessica, who was on the U.S. silver medal-winning 2008 Olympic team, had gone to Stanford with Lolo. They had played water polo together there. They were now on the 2012 U.S. national team together.

When Jessica first moved down to Southern California in early 2011 to train for the 2012 team, she didn't have a bed or, really, much stuff to call her own. So she had moved in with Kathy, in Long Beach.

"It was so nice having her here," Kathy said. "She was so nice to talk to. We cooked together, and we laughed, and her father," Carlos, who is well-known in water polo circles, "is really funny."

For her part, Jessica said she was so grateful just to be able to help Kathy in any little way she could. She cooked. She cleaned. Whatever.

"Right before she was going into surgery, we went out with the team to breakfast and we invited Kathy and Lolo," Jessica said. "For both of them, that was really special.

"That was good for us, too, to feel we were part of it and we were there for them."

During the surgery, doctors removed Kathy's eye. Three weeks later, they called with bad news. We are so sorry, they said, but the cancer isn't all gone. You have to undergo 40 radiation treatments.

By the end of the course of the radiation, Kathy was, as she put it, "pretty sick." She had to check into a hospital for a week, right around the 4th of July.

The parents of some of the women on the team, Jessica said, took time to visit Kathy in the hospital.

Lolo, meanwhile, was juggling practice, hospital, practice. Or trying to. She didn't make the U.S. team that went to the 2011 world championships in Shanghai.

"Obviously, I was pretty upset I didn't make the world championships team," Lolo said. "At that point, it kind of showed me that there are bigger things in life."

Understand that Lolo had always been, as one of her oldest and best friends, Jessica Hardy,  who went to high school with her at Long Beach Wilson, put it, "really tough … independent tough."

Jessica Hardy is one of America's top-ranked sprint swimmers. She said, "Kathy is one of the nicest persons to have ever walked the face of the earth. To have this happen to her -- everyone was heartbroken."

Now, Jessica Hardy said, Lolo was "100 percent putting her mom before anybody else -- and that's hard the year before the Olympics when you're doing everything you can to focus on that.

" … I was really proud of her. Everyone was proud of her."

The U.S. team struggled to sixth place in Shanghai. Lolo took the time to go up to Stanford, to train with her coaches there. Next on the schedule: the Pan Am Games in Guadalajara, Mexico, in October.

Lolo was the team's alternate; she attended the team's training camp in Colorado Springs, Colo., but did not travel to Mexico. The U.S. won Pan Am gold, Jessica's younger sister, Maggie, scoring the winning goal in a wild 27-26 penalty shootout over Canada in the championship game.

That victory qualified the Americans for London. Canada was knocked out of the Olympics Friday, losing at a last-chance meet in Trieste, Italy.

Last month, Lolo was on the roster for a tournament in Russia called the Kirishi Cup. She scored three goals against Spain, albeit in a 12-10 loss.

There's no question Lolo can score. As she well knows, she has to play defense, the hallmark of U.S. coach Adam Krikorian's winning way.

"I pride myself in defense. I like playing defense. I don't think people understand that," Lolo said. "It's not that I am so focused on offense that the defense gets overlooked. I understand it really well; I realize what I need to do to play really good defense."

That understanding underscores another layer of Lolo and Kathy -- indeed, the team's -- journey.

For this past year and a half, these 17 women have willingly, readily become a family.

All the while knowing that only 13 will go to London.

The team will be formally named in about a month, on May 17, at a ceremony at the LA 84 Foundation, the legacy building of the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

It is widely believed that Lolo is one of those on the bubble.

The other 16 have done everything and more for Lolo and Kathy, Lolo saying amid tears of release and joy, "I couldn't imagine going through it without them."

One of the others, Kami Craig, said, "Being part of a team, it's always being compared to being part of a family.

"… When we're not at the pool, you can find most of us hanging out with each other. You're doing a year and a half of full-time. That's family. There's not a lot of things you can hide from each other, whether you want to or not. That's the beauty of it. And the discomfort of it.

"When Lolo's mom got sick, it was natural for us to gather around her and make sure she had all the support she needed to handle the situation."

Kami also said, "If anything like that would happen to myself, I would expect the same. It's a no-brainer.

"… It's letting your guard down. It's knowing you can rely on your teammates, not just in the water but out of the water. It's not fake. It's real."

At the same time, the full-on competition to make the team is intensely real, too.

"Of course I want to be there more than anything," Lolo said.

She added, "It's weird. We are a team. It's weird to think about that, that at the end of the day some of us won't make it. We're all so close now."

Listening to those remarks, Krikorian said, "We are almost there," adding, referring to the players, "They have almost taken this thing completely," which of course has been the goal all along, because a team that takes ownership develops communication, trust, respect and, ultimately, confidence.

He said, "We have a few more months to go. I am very thankful for those months because they will get us where we want this team to be. It's not my team. It's our team."

If Lolo does make the 2012 Olympic team, her mom will absolutely be able to see her play in London with her good eye. "It has been a long road," Kathy said.

Kathy is back to running again. She is back in the water, too, at the Seal Beach Swim Club, teaching second- through seventh-graders twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

If you saw Kathy, you wouldn't know anything was amiss. She has an artificial eye; the artists spent considerable time matching the coloring so that the shades of blue look just so.

During the surgery, doctors had to cut an optic nerve; Kathy said the left side of her face is numb. Even so, she said she considers herself fortunate. She has her water polo family. There's a lot of goodness to be thankful for. And, she said, "Luckily, my smile is there."

Alice Coachman: 1948 pioneer, hero, inspiration

In New York on Wednesday, 100 days before the start of the London 2012 Olympics, Alice Coachman was treated like the hero she is, the first African-American -- indeed, the first black woman from any county -- to win an Olympic gold medal. There she was on the set of NBC's Today show, alongside the likes of other U.S. 1948 gold medalists: Ray Lumpp, a play-making guard on the basketball team; Dr. Sammy Lee, the diver and the first Asian-American gold medalist; and Mal Whitfield, the best 400- and 800-meter runner of his time.

For 10 years, Alice Coachman dominated the high jump. War kept her from the Olympics. Finally, she got to go, in 1948, and she won. The ruler of England, King George VI, presented her with her gold medal.

"It was all fine," she said on national television, "fine to have the king to award me the gold medal."

Except -- it wasn't all so fine back then, and Alice Coachman's story is a reminder of just how far we as Americans have come in matters of pluralism and tolerance and diversity, and yet how far we have to go, and how sports and the Olympics can sometimes help us get there.

The story will be told time and again between now and July 27, the opening ceremony of 2012, about how those 1948 Games were the "Austerity Games."

As David Miller, an experienced British sportswriter and author and longtime observer of the Olympic scene, put it in a piece commissioned for the Olympic newsletter Sport Intern, the 1948 Games all but saved the movement -- London coming to the International Olympic Committee's rescue, "rising from bankrupted, war-torn ravages to host an altruistic, economy festival."

The American team that went to London -- for the most part -- got there by steamship. They stayed ready by jogging on the promenade; the rowers rowed on special equipment nailed to the deck. At night, they put on skits and danced for their own entertainment. Alice Coachman was a featured dancer to "St. Louis Blues."

The scale of the spectacle was way different than now, and markedly so coming so soon after the end of World War II.

An Olympic Village was deemed to be too expensive; male competitors stayed at Royal Air Force camps; female competitors in London colleges. Athletes were given increased rations,the same as those received by, say, miners; that meant 5,467 calories per day instead of the normal 2,600.

Artificial track and field surfaces wouldn't be build until the late 1950s. Runners ran on cinders. High jumpers threw themselves not into a pit of cushions but sawdust.

As the Games went on, 74 Americans would win gold medals.

But -- only one woman.

Both Alice Coachman and the high jump silver medalist, Britain's Dorothy Tyler, cleared 1.68 meters, or 5-feet-6 1/4.

Coachman cleared it on her first try. Tyler didn't make it until her second.

Thus Coachman won gold.

In an oral history project recorded a few years ago and now available online, Coachman had said her coach had been chewing her out the day before the competition, worrying she wasn't properly prepared to win.

Don't worry, Coachman said. I'm ready. I have the lemon I use to stay hydrated between jumps. And, she said, "I was talking to the man above, telling him, 'If it's your will, let it be done.' "

So it was.

After winning gold, that same coach, Coachman said, now with a big smile, "All that cussing she did, honey, before -- she took me [and said], 'Where do you want to go tonight?

'… I'll take you anywhere you want to go tonight and you can do anything you want to do!' "

When the American team got back to the States, the party was still on. In New York, Coachman said she got to meet Count Basie and his wife, and have a good time with them for a few days.

After that, though, reality set in.

They held a celebration for Coachman in Albany, Ga., her hometown.

Black people sat on one side of the stage, she recalled; whites, on the others.

Both sides cheered for her.

But the mayor of the town -- who was white -- would not shake her hand.

Asked in the oral history project how she felt about that, she said, "It wasn't a good feeling. You had to accept it. It was done then, you know. You represented the USA. You had to represent the black, the white, the Jews and the gentile. You represented the USA. As this lady told you, you went to England, this was entirely different.

"To come back home, to your own country, your own state and your own city and you can't get a handshake from your own mayor -- it wasn't a good feeling. But it had to be done. That's the way it was."

She went on to say that some people in town sent her flowers, even jewelry, in celebration of her win. But those gifts were sent anonymously -- whites apparently afraid of retribution if it were known that they were sending gifts to a black woman.

"That's the way it was then."

Now, of course, it's unremarkable that black athletes are winning medals for Team USA.

The president of USA Track & Field, Stephanie Hightower, a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team, is black. Among other key leaders, so, too, is the organization's chief of sport performance, Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, a 1984 gold medalist in the 100-meter hurdles.

It would belabor the obvious to say that while we have made real progress in bridging the racial divide in the United States we still have many miles to go. Sports, and the Olympics, offers a means by which people of good will can see that the color of your skin doesn't matter a bit; what matters is your heart, your soul and your will.

When Alice Coachman won her medal, the king of England presented it to her but the mayor of her town wouldn't even shake her hand. Now a black man is president of the United States; black women are in senior positions of authority at the United States track and field federation; and, at 88, Alice Coachman is on national TV and everyone wants to shake her hand.

Just to say thank you.

Shannon Miller: happy, healthy, optimistic

It's 101 days to go Tuesday until the opening ceremony in London, and Shannon Miller is in Chicago, up early, on the telephone, happy, healthy, talking about gymnastics, about Nastia Liukin, about how records are made to be broken, about how the 2012 U.S. women's team looks really good. It's all good.

Of course it is. Any day you're cancer-free is, as Shannon Miller makes plain, a great day.

It was just a little bit over a year ago that Miller, America's most-decorated gymnast, was diagnosed with a form of ovarian cancer.

During an annual exam, doctors discovered a baseball-sized cyst,  a germ cell malignancy, on an ovary. The cyst and ovary were removed. Miller then opted for several weeks of preventative chemotherapy said to improve her cure rate to 99 percent.

Early detection -- as ever in many cancer cases -- is key, she said.

A few weeks ago, Miller turned 35; she was 33 when the tumor was discovered.  "With something like ovarian cancer, you think it's for older women," she said. "Cancer doesn't care how old you are. It doesn't care how many gold medals you have. It doesn't discriminate."

Shannon Miller has two gold medals, both from 1996 in Atlanta, the team gold and the individual balance beam. She has five more from 1992 in Barcelona, two silvers in the all-around and the beam and three bronze medals, the team and the individual bars and floor.

For those counting, she also has nine world championship medals.

Nastia Liukin won five Olympic medals in Beijing in 2008. That's of course the same number Miller won in Barcelona.

Liukin, the 2008 all-around champion, is now in training for London. It's unclear whether she can repeat as 2012 all-around champ. She didn't, for instance, even compete at the 2011 world championships; Jordyn Wieber, a 16-year-old from East Lansing, Mich., was the all-around winner, and the Americans surprisingly won team gold.

Then again -- Liukin, when she is in top form, can deliver an almost ethereal performance on the uneven bars. Gymnastics insiders know that the 2012 U.S. team is almost surely going to need a strong bars performer. Might it be Liukin?

"My feelings on Nastia -- I love her," Miller said.

"I see a beautiful, beautiful athlete. I see that classical style. Because I went through my own comeback," from Barcelona to Atlanta, "I see in her that wanting to learn new skills, to wanting to be with my gymnastics family again, to feel that adrenaline rush. I understand that competitive rush.

"If anyone is going to break my records, I would be glad to turn it over to Nastia. That's what the U.S. should be doing. I would be sad if my records stood for decades. Because that means no one would be coming along for decades and decades. It needs to happen."

Since 2000, the U.S. women have dominated world gymnastics, winning 60 world and Olympic medals -- no other nation has more than 35 -- and producing the last two Olympic champions.

But -- the Americans have not won team gold at the Games since 1996.

The American roster this year is so deep that picking five -- that's all you get -- from the roster of 20 on the national team will doubtlessly be an enormous challenge.

But it also, for gymnastics experts and casual fans alike, ought to produce intense interest.

That's what Miller was doing in Chicago -- promoting a meet there at the end of May, the Secret U.S. Classic, a let's-see-what-you've-got-in-your-routines in time for the June 7-10 Visa national championships in St. Louis, which are themselves a get-ready for the Olympic Trials June 28-July 1 in San Jose.

That's a lot of gymnastics to get through before London. At the same time, it's an enormous competitive advantage. Because the five who make it surely should be honed and ready.

Miller said, "I really feel like this year, we are obviously going to … put five incredibly talented, maybe the most incredibly talented, athletes we have ever put out there."

She said, "It's kind of theirs to lose at this point."

And then she added, speaking only about gymnastics but in a reference that bore the wisdom of someone who knows what really matters in life itself, "I think it comes down to: will they be healthy?"

Shawn Johnson puzzles her future

Shawn Johnson has a lot of fans. For good reason. She is the 2007 gymnastics all-around world champion and the winner of four medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. One of those medals, on the balance beam, is gold. In 2009, she won "Dancing With the Stars." Shawn Johnson is the whole package. From the get-go, she has represented herself, her family and her country with class and style.

When Shawn announced almost two years ago that she was going to try to mount a comeback for the 2012 London Games, many of her fans assumed she would be a lock for the U.S. team.

Shawn has known better, and for a long time. So have many gymnastics insiders. The knee she blew out in a skiing accident celebrating her 18th birthday was going to make it that much tougher. So would the extended time off from the gym.

Now, with the London Games about 100 days away, 20-year-old Shawn is diligently working out, once more in the same West Des Moines, Iowa, gym, and again under the tutelage of coach Liang Chow. The aim is clear. The will is there. But, in a frank and revealing conversation Friday, she acknowledged she very well might not make the 2012 U.S. team.

"My biggest goal," she said, referring to the U.S. team, "is for them to get the gold medal.

"If I am not part of the team, I have to accept that."

Which, she said, she has, fully and completely.

"I am OK with that. It's what's best for the USA. It's not what's best for me."

She added a moment later, "It just happens that this time around it's not about the individual part of it. It's about the team. A lot of people might be in shock: 'Oh, Shawn might not be on the team.' They need to understand the bigger picture of it."

Here is the bigger picture:

The U.S. team won the 2011 world championships. Shawn was not on that team.

Jordyn Wieber, who is 16, from East Lansing, Mich., was the 2011 all-around world champion. Beyond which, Americans won gold on vault (McKayla Maroney, 16, of Long Beach, Calif.) and bronze on beam (Wieber) and floor exercise (Aly Raisman, 17, of Needham, Mass.).

Further:

Nastia Liukin, the 2008 Olympic all-around champion, has said she intends to be fighting for a spot on the 2012 Olympic team. As will be the 2005 world champion, Chellsie Memmel. And the 2009 world champion, Bridget Sloan. And a six-time world medalist, Rebecca Bross. And Alicia Sacramone, who -- along with Nastia, Shawn, Chellsie and Bridget (and Samantha Peszek) made up the silver medal-winning 2008 U.S. team -- was also the 2010 world vault champion.

As if that wasn't enough, there's now one less spot available on the 2012 team. In 2008 there were six spots on each team. In 2012, because of a rules change by the international gymnastics federation, only five.

That means each girl has to fit within what is truly an Olympic puzzle piece. If, for instance, Wieber is the all-around candidate -- though logical, that is necessarily an if -- then you have to figure who ought to fill the other slots.

To win the team gold, the puzzle demands specialists, and Shawn -- as she readily acknowledges -- is an all-arounder.

To add to the complexity, there's one more rising star, and Shawn not only knows this all too well but is rooting for her, and big-time:

Gabby Douglas, 16, who is from Virginia Beach, Va., but now trains with Shawn and under Chow in Iowa.

In New York in March, at an event called the American Cup at Madison Square Garden, Jordyn was the official winner, with Aly second. But Gabby, competing unofficially as an "alternate," posted the highest score.

"Honestly, at first through this whole comeback and being back in the gym, it was a little different -- being honest, it was a little difficult to accept," having Gabby there, Shawn said.

"It was almost like sharing a parent for the first time," she said.

She laughed. "Honestly, I have grown to love it and love her like a sister," indeed saying she is now Gabby's "biggest fan and cheerleader."

At competitions, Shawn said, "I'm extremely nervous" for Gabby. It's as if she, Shawn, is "the older sister." Shawn said that when Gabby competes, she "is closing my eyes and praying."

Just the way thousands upon thousands of fans have always done for Shawn.

If they don't get the chance to do that again this summer in London for Shawn, Shawn said -- please understand.

It's not that she's not trying to make it happen. She is in the gym. She is working hard.

But the situation is what it is.

Shawn said she has known with certainty since the 2011 worlds how daunting a prospect it was going to be to make the 2012 U.S. Olympic team.

"It started to not necessarily upset me or give me doubt or anything -- but the whole picture and the whole process of how it was going to work and the  who-fits-where kind of thing, and [how] it would be very difficult for me to fit into this puzzle.

"They have a strong all-arounder in Jordyn Wieber. She was as strong as I was in 2008. To find a place for me to fit in is hard. I am not saying that but-for-the-grace-of-God or a miracle it couldn't happen. But it will be difficult."

A few moments earlier, asked how she was feeling about the prospect of not making the team, she said, "I actually feel pretty good about it, which a lot of people say is weird. I have accepted any outcome since I started coming back. I have accepted how things work.

"Honestly, going back to that first competition" -- a meet in Chicago last July -- "was the biggest success to me."

World Fit Walk: "... really a great thing"

Rod DeHaven ran the marathon at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Now he's the track coach at South Dakota State. A few days ago, he got in his car, and drove three hours, along the two-lane road that is U.S. Highway 14, toward Pierre, the state capital, just so he could give a talk to 180 kids, ages 6 to 15, at the Pierre Indian Learning Center, an off-reservation boarding school for Native American students, about how he had come from a family of janitors and made something of himself and they could, too.

And they could start by just -- walking. That simple and yet that powerful.

"It was really a great thing," Dr. Veronica Pietz, the director of the school, said. "We've even got our little guys participating. Our teachers are participating. Everyone is participating. It's the first time we've ever done anything like this."

"This" is World Fit Walk -- an initiative pushed hard over the past four years in particular by Gary Hall Sr., the gold medal-winning swimmer from the 1970s, in response to two particular and obvious challenges:

One, speaking generally, American kids are fat.

Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The percentage of children aged 6 to 11 in the United States who were obese went from 7 percent in 1980 to nearly 20 percent in 2008. Over the same time frame, the percentage of adolescents -- ages 12 to 19 -- categorized as obese jumped from 5 to 18 percent, according to the CDC.

Something has to be done.

Which leads directly to the second issue.

There are, roughly, 8,000 former U.S. Olympic alumni -- or, in the parlance they prefer, Olympians, an Olympic athlete being an Olympian now and forever. Aside from those who figured out how to make a living on Olympic fame, the vast majority are pretty much living life in Hometown USA. Most would love the chance to do something as Olympians.

As Olympians, it's logical to assume they could make for an incredibly powerful interest group. Assuming they could, in the first instance, form a coherent group. Which perhaps assumes further they could find a cause around which to rally.

Bingo.

"The most compelling problem this country faces is childhood obesity," Hall said. "And who better than Olympians to lead a healthier life?"

World Fit Walk is a simple concept. For 40 days, kids in elementary and middle school grades walk; the program also includes teachers, families and friends. Olympians and Paralympians "adopt" a particular school. Everyone tallies their miles. The whole thing is a national competition. It generates school spirit. There are prizes galore.

The program launched in South Florida in 2009 with two schools, Hall said.

In 2010 it began expanding around the country to 17 schools; in 2011, it grew to 42.

This year's program launched last week; it will reach 78 schools and roughly 30,000 kids in 18 states, Hall said. One sponsor, Platinum Performance, a California-based dietary supplement company, is already on board; another is expected shortly, he said.

"What are experts at? We are experts at training like crazy people," said Willie Banks, the celebrated 1980s triple jumper who is president of the U.S. Olympians Assn.

"If you go in and say, 'Everyone can walk and if you can't walk, everyone can push their chair, that's exercise.' Who better to ask you to do that than an Olympian or Paralympian. That's where our sweet spot is."

An added 2012 component: a series of 20 community walks held around the United States, organized and led by Olympians and Paralympians who make up the nation's 20 Olympians Alumni chapters. The first was held last week in Los Angeles; the last will be June 23 in Washington, D.C.; the goal is to reach 5,456 miles, the distance from L.A., the 1932 and 1984 Summer Games city, to London, which played host to the Games in 1908 and 1948 and will of course be the 2012 city.

The kids in World FIt Walk are clearly going to have help make up the fictional miles across the Atlantic to get to 5,456, it's pretty clear.

No problem.

Last year, at South Gate Middle School near Los Angeles, more than 2,600 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders took part -- believed to be the most kids of any school anywhere in the country.

Dominik Meichtry, a Swiss swimmer who is now engaged to the American swimmer Jessica Hardy, is South Gate's "adopted" Olympian. He was there last year and is due back at school next week. Already, World Fit is reaching out to Olympians from other nations, too.

"No matter what nationalities we are -- at the end of the day, we share that same bond," Meichtry said.

Patricia Alvarez, the physical education director at South Gate, said of Meichtry's 2011 appearance, "They couldn't imagine meeting an Olympian. He brought a video in where he raced against [Michael Phelps] and he beat him … the kids were overwhelmed."

She also said, "The fact that an Olympian comes to our school, and motivates our kids, really helps the kids realize that it's about the health thing everyone talks about. It's more than just their PE teacher telling them, 'You have to be healthy.' It's about their life well-being."

Dave Johnson, the U.S. decathlon star from the 1990s who won bronze at the Barcelona Games, gave a talk last week at another Native American school, the Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Ore.

He showed some of his old Dave and Dan Reebok commercials -- with 1996 decathlon gold medalist Dan O'Brien -- which, of course, the teachers remembered but not the kids. He talked, too, about how, at those 1992 Games, when he expected to win gold he ended up with a stress fracture in his left foot; he put on a shoe two sizes too big, laced it up tight, sucked it up and went out there and toughed it out for bronze.

"Usually," Johnson said, "you get 100 or 200 kids in a room like that, they're goofy. They were quiet. You could hear a pin drop."

DeHaven, halfway across the country, made the point that it surely doesn't have to be about winning a medal.

The vast majority of Olympic athletes don't. Nine of 10 athletes who march in the opening ceremony don't.

DeHaven, for instance, finished 15 minutes slower in the marathon in Sydney than he had in winning the U.S. Trials.

It doesn't matter.

"For Olympians," DeHaven said, "especially the ones who weren't medalists, which of course many of us aren't, the story I tell for anyone who will have me speak … I fell on my face. The kids in this situation -- they need to see that people who fall on their face, they need to see, look, I was able to get back up."

The kids that day at the Pierre Learning Center didn't much care that Rod DeHaven finished 69th at the 2000 Sydney Olympic marathon. They crowded around him for autographs like he was a hero.

Which he was.

He didn't ask for an appearance fee. He drove three hours there, and three hours back home through the great plains of South Dakota, to tell each and every one of those kids that they could make something of themselves, too.

Wallace Spearmon's soulful 19.95

Wallace Spearmon Jr. has always been one of the most soulful guys on the track and field circuit. He runs with heart. He speaks from the heart. If only he could stay healthy, he could capture America's heart.

Maybe this is his year.

A few days ago, at the UTA Bobby Layne Invitational meet in Arlington, Texas, attended by track geeks along with wives, girlfriends, cousins, aunts and uncles and a few dozen other people who apparently thought that hanging out at a track meet might beat going to the mall, Spearmon ran the 200 meters in 19.95 seconds.

That was a world-leading time.

A note:

No one -- but no one -- runs 19.95 in March.

That 19.95 was the earliest anyone has recorded a sub 20-second time in the Northern Hemisphere, according to USA Track & Field.

A second note:

At that same meet, Spearmon's training partner, Darvis "Doc" Patton, ran a 10.04 100. That was the fastest 100 of the year.

A third note, and this -- particularly if you know track and field, and the potential of both these athletes -- borders on the amazing:

That race -- you can watch it, as well as Patton's, here -- was the first time in 2012 Spearmon had been in spikes past 90 meters.

"This is top-secret info," Spearmon said with a laugh. "We have been doing 30s, 40s, maybe 60s. 90 meters is the farthest I had run in spikes all year. I had been wearing flats," adding a moment later, "In that race I felt sloppy."

Spearmon also said, and here he was back to his serious self, "I have never been 100 percent. This is the first year people are starting to see what I am capable of. I have no idea what I'm capable of. I want to find out."

Spearmon has always had talent. No one has ever doubted that.

His father was the 1987 bronze medalist in the 200 at the Pan Am Games, and in college, at Arkansas, Wallace Jr. won the NCAA title in the 200 in 2004 and 2005.

Running the 200 at the world championships, he won silver in 2005, and bronze in 2007 and 2009.

Again in the 200, he finished in the bronze position at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. But then he was disqualified for stepping out of his lane.

That 2008 DQ claws at him still.

"I dreamed as a child of being an Olympic medalist. Not a world championship medalist.

"Not to take anything away from that. I have between four and eight [world championship] medals. I need that one from the Olympics. If I can get that one from the Olympics, and then when my career is over, I can say I achieved what I was after."

Last year, Spearmon was hurt -- a bad Achilles. That's why there's no "2011 world championship medal" among the string.

That's why, too, he's being cautious and yet aggressive about 2012.

"Doc came up to me the other day and said, 'You want to go home?' I said, 'I just want to go to practice and run 'til I can't walk anymore.' This is how I express myself."

"Typically at practice, I am The Man," Patton said, reflecting on his own long career in the sport. "I run the times. Now he comes in and runs faster than I do. We feed off each other."

Patton also said, "I think that if we both stay healthy, God willing we stay healthy, we are going to have a great year. And we are having fun."

You can see the fun in a series of YouTube videos that peel back the curtain on what Spearmon and Patton have been doing this year, along with others in their training group and coach Monte Stratton.

Tyson Gay, according to ESPN, won't attempt to make the U.S. team in both the 100 and 200; Gay, the 2007 100 and 200 world champ who himself has been dogged by injury, said he plans to focus only on the 100.

Spearmon said he hopes Gay is in the 200. Along with Walter Dix, the 2008 Beijing 100 and 200 bronze medalist and 2011 world championship 100 and 200 silver medalist. And anyone else. All comers.

"If I am ever going to medal," he said, "I would want everyone there, everyone at their best. That way you wouldn't be able to say, 'Oh, he only won because so-and-so wasn't there or this guy had a bad day.'

"I love to compete … I love track and field but I love to compete. Track and field has given me an opportunity to compete."

And he said, "Man, not to toot my own horn, I am trying to be humble and modest, I am healthy. I am healthy for the first time in a long time."

Paul Hamm's legacy

A couple days ago, Paul Hamm announced his retirement. Is he the most accomplished male American gymnast ever?

Or is he the greatest difference-maker of all time in the U.S. men's gymnastics program?

Or -- both?

There are those who would say that Kurt Thomas still holds the most profound legacy. In 1978, Thomas was the first American to win a gold medal in the floor exercise at a world championship. In 1979, he became the first gymnast to receive the James E. Sullivan Award, given to the best amateur athlete in the United States.

Thomas was expected to dominate at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Though the United States boycotted, Thomas nonetheless set the stage for "a lot of success, including ours," said Bart Conner, who himself won gold on the parallel bars at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and was part of the gold medal-winning U.S. team at those 1984 Games.

Even so, Conner said, "In terms of hard-core credentials -- you can't deny Paul's."

Is that where the debate starts? Or ends?

Simply put, you truly can't deny Hamm's credentials.

He is the 2003 all-around world champion. He is the 2004 all-around Olympic champion.

In Athens in 2004, he led the United States to a silver medal, the Americans' first medal at an Olympics in 20 years. He was the rock of silver-medal teams at the 2001 and 2003 worlds.

He earned five medals at the worlds. He has three Olympic medals.

It can be difficult now for many to remember the furor that enveloped Hamm amid those  2004 Olympic Games. A fall on the vault left him in 12th, with only two events left. Incredibly, he rallied to win gold.

"He had ice water in his veins," said Peter Vidmar, another of the 1984 team gold medalists who also won individual gold at those Los Angeles Games on the pommel horse, now chairman of the board at USA Gymnastics. "He was great under pressure."

Best, Hamm always had an elegant style to his routines: "He was able to make it look effortless," Conner said.

A couple days after Hamm's triumph, meanwhile, the international gymnastics federation, which goes by the acronym FIG, said that South Korea's Yang Tae-young had not been given the right start value on his next-to-last event. Add in the right value, an extra tenth of a point, and Yang would have scored higher than Hamm.

If, and this is a huge if, everything had played out exactly the same on the final rotation -- which, of course, no one can ever say.

Moreover, the Korean team did not protest in time. And FIG said it couldn't change results after the competition was over.

It took a full two months for all the legal wrangling to play out.

The crazy thing is that the process left Hamm in the position of having to defend his gold medal. And why? He did nothing wrong. All he did was perform under pressure, which is what anyone asks of a champion.

Another unfortunate aspect: Women's gymnastics typically gets way more favorable publicity, especially in the United States. In the ordinary circumstance, men's gymnastics in general, and Hamm in particular, stood to cash in -- literally and figuratively -- on that gold medal. Not in 2004. Not really.

To underscore how hard it is to do what Hamm did in 2003 and 2004:

In London this summer, perhaps the gymnast widely considered the best in the world, Japan's Kohei Uchimura, will come through, and win the all-around gold. Uchimura is the 2009, 2010 and 2011 world all-around champ.

But unless and until he wins in London -- Hamm is a member of a club, world and Olympic all-around champ, that Uchimura is not.

As Uchimura would know. He is the Beijing 2008 all-around silver medalist.

"Paul is the catalyst of the current era of success in men's gymnastics we are enjoying now," Vidmar said.

"He made everybody else better," added Kevin Mazeika, the U.S. team's national coordinator who in 2008 was the U.S. team coach. "When everybody is trying to beat not just the best guy in your country but the best guy in the world -- that just makes you better."

In Beijing, the U.S. men won bronze. That gave the Americans back-to-back team Olympic medals for the first time in history.

At last year's worlds, the U.S. men won bronze again. Danell Leyva won gold on parallel bars. At the 2010 worlds, Jonathan Horton was the all-around bronze medalist.

The thing about gymnastics is that the sport is so physically demanding -- you wonder what could have been.

In the lead-up to Beijing, Hamm was rocking his routines, "clicking on all cylinders and definitely positioned to make a very solid run at the all-around gold," as Mazeika put it.

Then, though, just 11 weeks before the Beijing opening ceremony, he broke a hand at the U.S. championships. The hand and an injured shoulder ultimately forced him to withdraw a few weeks before those Olympics.

In July, 2010, Hamm announced another comeback.

In early 2011, he tore his right labrum and rotator cuff.

Last September, in an episode that still seems entirely out of character, Hamm was arrested in Columbus, Ohio, accused of hitting and kicking a taxi driver, damaging the cab's window and refusing to pay a $23 fine. Last month, he pleaded no contest to two reduced charges, both misdemeanors.

With the court action out of the way, Hamm seemed poised for London.

But -- that right shoulder especially, he said, was "clicking and popping and creaking," making sounds "like when a squeaky door opens."

He added with a laugh, "It's tough to train through that."

Paul Hamm will turn 30 in September. Asked how he thinks he ought to be remembered in the history books, he said, "For being a tremendous athlete who was dedicated and focused and an amazing competitor. And remembered for my biggest accomplishments. And also remembered as a nice person."

Typical Paul Hamm -- no mention of medals won.

"What I saw him do was elevate our program more than anybody in the history of our sport," said Steve Penny, who has been with USA Gymnastics since 1999, its president since 2005.

"He became the Michael Jordan of men's gymnastics in the United States. He became Tiger Woods. He forced people to raise their game in order to compete with him, not just in our country but around the world.

"He showed that an American gymnast could rise to the level of any gymnast around the world. He is the only guy who has been able to do that."

Valley High's American dream

This is a story about diversity, about tolerance, about the make-up of California and, more, the United States of America as it really is now. There were seven girls on this year's Santa Ana Valley High School water polo team. Six are Latino. One is Vietnamese-American. "We had to find some way to communicate to become a family," said one of the team's seniors, 17-year-old Bianka Baeza. It's about one really great coach, Fred Lammers, a 59-year-old biology teacher who has been at the same school since 1976, who gets up at 4:30 every morning and then rides his bicycle to and from work, who is on the pool deck before dawn, who believes in the elemental mission of helping young people become the best they can be.

Finally, it's about the thing that sports teaches if you're willing to go there. "If you believe in yourself," the team's senior captain, 17-year-old Liz Silva, said, "anything is possible. You just have to do it."

When they joined the program, most at the start of their freshmen year at Valley High, none of the seven players on the team knew how to swim. Literally, none could swim. Each had to start by blowing bubbles in the shallow end of the high school pool.

Now they are the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section Division 7 water polo champions -- and for the second straight year.

In the championship game, played recently at nearby Irvine High School, Valley defeated Los Amigos High, 8-7, senior attacker Jazmin Hinojoza scoring with 2:40 remaining to seal the deal. Jazmin, who scored five goals in the game, was later named the section's player of the year.

Again -- four years ago she couldn't even tread water.

"I would be in the shallow end," Jazmin, now 18, said of her childhood and pools. "I would float." But as for the deep end, and swimming itself? "I would never feel the need to."

Water polo is maybe the toughest game there is. It's back-and-forth swimming and constant contact, above and below the water. A California high school game is four seven-minute quarters.

At the start of every school year at Valley, Lammers advertises -- over the internal public-address system -- for recruits. He is under no illusions. Valley opened in 1959. According to its most recent report, it now serves roughly 2,400 students, of whom 96.7 are Latino and 93.3 are "socioeconomically disadvantaged."

Liz Silva's mom works in a fabric factory, sewing backpacks. Jazmin Hinojoza's mom is a bus driver. Bianka Baeza's mom doesn't have work right now; her stepdad does maintenance at an apartment complex.

Drowning is the second-leading cause of childhood accidental death. Five years ago, USA Swimming launched a program called "Make a Splash." It now features -- among others -- Cullen Jones, a gold medalist from the 2008 Beijing Games 400-meter freestyle relay, who himself nearly drowned as a boy.

On Thursday, the program announced $300,000 in grants to partners in 20 states; overall, it has worked with 515 providers in 47 states. Michael Phelps' foundation has also launched learn-to-swim drives across the country.

Similarly, USA Water Polo is now giving its "Splashball" program free to programs such as YMCAs, JCCs, Boys & Girls Clubs and parks and recreation departments.

The urgency behind these initiatives is obvious: the drowning rates are alarming, and they're nothing less than horrifying for children who come from minority households. Four of 10 white children, according to USA Swimming, can't swim. In Latino households, that number is six of 10. In black households, it's seven of 10.

"I don't get anyone who knows how to swim," Fred Lammers said. "If you throw them into the deep water, you'd better jump in and save them."

Remarkably, the school is the site of a 50-meter pool, same as an Olympic distance, installed just four years ago, after a successful bond measure. It was built with one quirk. There's a shallow end.

That's where swim lessons at Valley High start.

"When it was time to go to the deep end," the second week of swim lessons, Bianka Baeza said, "I was like, 'Are you serious? Already?' I was so scared.

"I was saying to myself, 'I don't want to drown.' "

Liz Silva said, "I thought I'd be able to swim in a week or two. I was wrong." It took a month just to get the strokes down, then another to get comfortable in deep water.

What kept her going, she said, was support from Lammers; from her two older sisters; and something else. She said, "I'm very competitive. I wanted to beat everybody in the water."

It's not just the learning how-to-swim element of the story that makes Valley's championship story so compelling. As well, each of the girls has good grades and, assuming finances can be worked out, is heading for college.

What makes the water polo part itself so improbable, if you know the sport, is that because there were only seven girls on the team there were essentially no substitutes.

As Claudia Dodson, USA Water Polo's director of club and member programs, said, "To overcome the swimming obstacle and go on to win a CIF championship with no subs is as close to a miracle as I can imagine."

The 2011 Valley team won the Division 7 championship but then graduated three players, leaving only those three seniors and junior goalkeeper Gabriela Chavez. To repeat? With three new juniors -- Vanessa Santos, Minh Le and Merab Romero?

Well -- why not?

"With water polo or any sport, you learn responsibility, you learn teamwork and you learn working with others. You learn so much being on a sports team," Bianka said.

Lammers said, "My favorite time of the year is toward the end of the season. I ask them for a minute, just to listen to me. Then they are out there and … they are running the game."

This, of course, is what every coach wants -- for his players to take control.

You want control? You want family?

Liz, a rising senior, and Minh, an incoming junior, knew before the school year began that they would be playing on the same side of the pool. Polo is like basketball, or soccer, in that regard.

So, last summer, Liz took it upon herself to go to Minh and learn the Vietnamese words and phrases for certain things they both knew would come up time and again. Like, "Go get the ball." Or, "Come in." Or, best yet," Shoot!"

Liz said it was hilarious when the two of them would be talking away in games in Vietnamese and players on the other teams would be looking at them in bewilderment: "The other girls were like, 'What are you telling her?!' "

During the 2012 regular season, Valley stormed to a 20-7 regular season record. On Jan. 31, Valley defeated Los Amigos, 4-3, with Minh lobbing a perfect lob shot into the far corner for the winner in sudden-death.

After making it through to the CIF championship game, the plan against Los Amigos was to get Jazmin the ball as much as possible.

Minh scored. Vanessa scored. Bianka scored. And Jazmin scored five.

The victory, Jazmin said, was dedicated not only to her coach and her teammates, but to her father, Richard, who died about a year ago, on Feb. 7, 2011. "I was feeling overwhelmed," she said. "I was thinking of my dad. It was hard. But I knew what I had to do."

She said, "It's, like, overwhelming how much we can accomplish in a short period of time. It's amazing. It was coaching. It was our determination. It was us, as a team."

Doug Beal's FIVB presidential bid

In the late 1970s, when Doug Beal was named head coach of the first U.S. men's national volleyball team, he was the driving force for establishing a full-time, year-round training center. The first facilities were in -- of all places -- Dayton, Ohio. The idea was to gear up for the 1980 Moscow Summer Games. One of the first training sites was Roosevelt High School. A bunch of the players had day jobs unloading produce for local supermarkets. This was hard, physical work, and then the guys were expected to show up for practice at 7 at night.

One night they showed up at Roosevelt, and practiced for three hours as usual, and went to leave, only to find the building was all locked up. One of the guys had to break out through one of the screened-up windows on the second-story gym, drop down and then break back in through the front door of the high school to let everyone else out.

Times were a little different back then.

Doug Beal is now a candidate for the presidency of the international volleyball federation, which goes by the acronym FIVB. The election is due to take place September in Anaheim, Calif. -- the first democratic election in the history of the federation, which has been around since 1947.

Two others are in the race, FIVB announced in a release issued Monday: Dr. Ary Graça, president of the Brazilian Volleyball Federation and the South American Volleyball Confederation, and Chris Schacht, president of the Australian Volleyball Federation.

Currently, there are no -- zero -- U.S. presidents of international federations on the Olympic program. Don Porter is the president of the softball federation; softball was kicked out of the Olympics after the 2008 Beijing Games.

Beal has been president of USA Volleyball since 2005. A recurring knock on American candidates for high office in the Olympic movement is that they don't put in the time and work their way up.

In Beal's case, that's laughable. Volleyball in Dayton, Ohio, in the 1970s? For a Games the American men's squad ultimately didn't qualify for? And the U.S. Olympic team didn't even go to?

Here is a guy who has devoted his life to the sport -- as a player, coach and executive. Beal served in the 1980s and 1990s on FIVB coaches and organizing commissions; he now serves on the North American confederation, called NORCECA, as a vice-president; it was NORCECA a couple weeks ago that formally submitted his presidential candidacy letter to FIVB's Lausanne, Switzerland, headquarters.

A few Beal career highlights: As player: five-time All-American at Ohio State. As coach: U.S. men's volleyball team, gold medal, 1984 L.A. Games. As administrator: 2008 Games, Beijing, U.S. becomes first nation ever to win five medals covering all disciplines at an Olympic and Paralympic volleyball competition.

The FIVB election figures to test what Beal called one of his best attributes, "a sense of inclusiveness and collaboration and a connectiveness" -- and measure the U.S. Olympic Committee's, too. The USOC has, since Chicago's 2016 bid was sent off in the first round of International Olympic Committee voting in 2009, quietly been in the relationship-building and outreach business.

This particular forum is the FIVB, not the IOC. Even so, the USOC is behind Beal's candidacy and, as Scott Blackmun, the USOC's chief executive said, "There are so many different constituencies with the Olympic movement. You really need to be plugged in to all the  constituencies. And clearly the international federation world is one we're not plugged into at a level you'd expect from a nation with our sporting background."

In Beal's tenure, USA Volleyball has doubled membership to an all-time high; doubled operating revenue and professional staff; set strong fiscal standards; and implemented best-practices governance initiatives.

These are the sorts of things Beal said in a recent interview in his Colorado Springs office that he'd like to implement, if elected, at FIVB.

For most of its existence, the federation was run by Paul Libaud of France (1947-84) and Dr. Ruben Acosta of Mexico (1984-2008). Jizhong Wei of China has been in charge since and made it clear he would not stand for another term.

What FIVB ought to take up, Beal said, is a strategic plan; good governance; and a serious effort to enhance the "direct connection" between the federation itself and each of the some 220 federations, no matter how big or small.

"I think and I very much believe," he also said, "it is extremely important for the FIVB to have this real election … so that we can have, for the first time a real exchange of ideas -- maybe we even call it a debate -- about the future of the sport, the direction of the sport the federation.

"… We are very popular at the Olympic Games and we have pockets of popularity around the world. But we have this tremendous opportunity for growth and expansion from the commercial perspective, from the viewership perspective, from the television perspective.

"And we have these Olympics sitting out there four years from now in Rio, where volleyball could easily or could likely be he featured sport of the Games because of its incredible popularity there. We have this great window, this great popularity, available to the FIVB. I would really relish the opportunity to be in a leadership position to help us take advantage of that."

Mario Vazquez Raña resigns

Mario Vazquez Raña, arguably the most influential figure in the Western Hemisphere in the Olympic movement, abruptly announced his resignation Thursday as a member of the International Olympic Committee. In a four-page press release, Vazquez Raña, who will turn 80 in June, said he is stepping down from the IOC; from his spot on the IOC's policy-making executive board; as president of Olympic Solidarity; and as president of the Assn. of National Olympic Committees.

"It has been very difficult for me to take such a drastic decision," he said, launching into a lengthy explanation and singling out two IOC political opponents -- Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahah Al-Sabah of Kuwait and Patrick Hickey of Ireland -- in an extraordinary document that lays bare some of the behind-the-scenes political infighting in the Olympic movement in a way that is almost never chronicled.

It has been clear since the ANOC general assembly in Acapulco in October, 2010, that Vazquez Raña was nearing the end of his Olympic days. In Acapulco he was re-elected to the ANOC presidency, for a term through 2014. The challenge is that the IOC imposes a mandatory age-80 retirement. Vazquez Raña's 80th birthday is June 7; he would have stopped being an IOC member in December. Thus, the inevitable conflict -- and the question of how he was going to go out.

On his terms?

Or someone else's?

The answer came, unequivocally, in today's blast.

Vazquez Raña did not get to power, and hold on to it, for some 30 years by being anything but clever and resourceful. He has been advisor and power-broker to former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch;  to current IOC president Jacques Rogge; to kings, princes, statesmen, dignitaries, authorities, officials, and others. Even, on occasion, reporters.

If the United States, meaning in particular NBC and other corporate interests, has provided the financial underpinning of the Olympic movement -- Vazquez Raña has been the political mover and shaker from this part of the world, reducing American political influence to the margins.

It has been a fascinating dynamic, really.

Vazquez Raña has not done it with stealth. Everyone in the movement knows full well who he is. But he has done his work, amazingly, speaking mostly Spanish - not so much English and not so much French.

He has always done things his way. To use an American colloquialism -- there's his way or the highway.

Not surprisingly, over the years not everyone has fully appreciated the Mario Vazquez Raña way.

Hence, as he has approached 80, the challenges, and in particular from Al-Sabah and from Hickey, who understandably saw opportunity.

Hickey serves as president of the European Olympic Committees; he is head of the Irish Olympic committee. He would appear to be in line to take over Vazquez Raña's seat on the IOC executive board pending an ANOC meeting in Moscow in April.

Al-Sabah is believed to be next in line for the ANOC presidency.

"This particular circumstance and the conclusion of my mandate as ANOC president in 2014 have given rise to an outrageous and aggressive race for my succession," Vazquez Raña said in the first page of the release, in the sixth paragraph, naming both Al-Sabah and Hickey by name, and the release goes on from there to become even more incendiary.

The last two ANOC executive council meetings, in Lausanne in December, 2011, and in London last February, Vazquez Raña said in the release, were the "stages chosen by these persons and their allies to express their personal ambitions, disloyalty, obscure alliances and lack of ethics and principles."

He added, "This situation is very reprehensible and dangerous for any organization that considers itself democratic and transparent, even more so for a sports organization, where fair play and ethics should prevail."

The "urgency of this kind of pressure" to put Hickey on the IOC board, Vazquez Raña said, "may only be explained by an excessive personal ambition and the craving for power of their promoters." Moroever, "I clearly pointed out that I do not consider him a person with the minimum ethical and moral qualities to fulfill that responsibility. His behavior in these events reaffirms my conviction."

Efforts to reach Hickey, reportedly traveling Thursday in Asia, proved unsuccessful.

As for Al-Sabah, Vazquez Raña alleged that at a meeting held in connection with the Asian Beach Games in Dubai in November 2011, it "is commented, quite strongly, that in order to secure support to his ambitious plans and be able to count with the necessary votes, the Sheikh delivered 50 thousand 'convincing reasons' to some sports leaders and it is speculated as well that he used the same procedure at the meetings held in December in Lausanne and in February in London."

Vazquez Raña added that Kuwait's national Olympic Committee has been suspended by the IOC for several years because of political interference by the government there with the Kuwaiti sports movement: "The Sheikh would have to be asked with what moral authority he intends to lead the National Olympic Committees worldwide."

The sheikh could not be reached for comment.

"... As a result of shady alliances and questionable procedures, the betrayal and assault to ANOC and its governing structures were hatched," Vazquez Raña summed up, leading him to "take the only responsible, serious and honorable road: resign," a word he wrote in all capital letters," resign for love and respect to sport, to ANOC, to the NOCs and the Olympic movement. I may never accept and much less tolerate disloyalty and a lack of principles."

It should be noted that Vazquez Raña is a media mogul. He knows us, and well, in the press. He is so sophisticated that he sent out this release in all four pages in beautiful English -- again, not his language.

Tomorrow is another day. Hickey and Al-Sabah will get their turn, and their say.

But on his way out let it be noted that Mario Vazquez Raña did it on his terms. He went out swinging. Hard. The Olympic movement has perhaps never seen anyone like him, or any release quite like this one.

There will be consequences.

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See the comments section below for the full four-page statement.