After returning home from Europe, I immediately went to see Dr. Schobert. He scheduled an MRI of my abdominals. Kerri, meanwhile, joined up with Rachel Wacholder to finish third in the FIVB event in Stavanger, Norway. Two weeks later, Kerri partnered with Jennifer Meredith to finish second in the AVP event in Belmar, New Jersey. And a week after that, she and Rachel won the FIVB event in Marseille, France, defeating Annett and Jenny. It was Rachel’s first win, so it was a great moment for both of them. Being on tour without me, though, taught Kerri how deep our bond was. She missed me so much, she must have called me a million times from Europe.
During this stretch of time, Dad received phone calls from Dane and from Kerri’s mother, Marge, both expressing concern that I wouldn’t be well enough to play in the Olympics. Dad felt pressure to have me withdraw from Athens.
“Butch, it’s imperative we know now,” Marge said. “Kerri has to pick a partner for Athens. She wants to know if Misty will be ready.”
Dad reminded both Dane and Marge that the U.S. Olympic Committee’s official deadline to declare its final Athens team roster was several weeks away. He kept reiterating that he wouldn’t answer for me, and pointing out that I’d earned the opportunity to decide for myself whether I could play.
Dr. Schobert also began to feel the pressure I was under: The U.S. Olympic Committee phoned his office, requesting a copy of my MRI report. He’d been very relieved with its findings. The MRI showed swelling and some minor disruption of a small number of muscle fibers. He called it a “severe strain,” advised me to take five weeks off from competition, and prescribed a rehabilitation program.
For the next two weeks, I did basic physical therapy, gradually expanding my team of healers.
I turned to Dan Rawson, a specialist in Hellerwork Structural Integration, a series of deep-tissue bodywork and movement education designed to realign the body, reorganize muscle and connective tissue, and release chronic tension and stress. I’d first visited Dan in Laguna Beach, California, on January 23, 2004, the day of my first date with Matt. At that time, my posture was my biggest concern. I’d wanted to realign my body. Dan found that my pelvis had a strong anterior tilt, meaning that it was tilted too much forward. My left hip wanted to tilt forward, while my right hip wanted to tilt backward. This created a strong asymmetry. After ten sessions, I looked like a different person. I stood more erect. In fact, I actually measured two inches taller. I also had more flexibility and a better range of motion.
I never told Dan that I played beach volleyball or divulged any of my accomplishments. On the initial informational documents, I listed myself as a “professional athlete.” Period. He’d work on me, then I’d head off to practice, and I’d immediately notice a difference—my shoulder didn’t hurt, or my serving and digging seemed effortless. After our sessions, he’d leave me in a comfortable place, then the following week, I’d come in, all beaten up, and he’d say, “My God, Misty, what do you do?” Now, he says the only sport more brutal on the body than beach volleyball is competitive motocross.
When I suffered my abdominal strain, I went back to visit Dan. While most physical therapists had been looking at my problem as being in my rectus abdominus, a paired muscle running vertically on each side of the anterior wall of the abdomen, Dan and his colleague Aimee Kolsby believed my problem was coming from the inner thigh on my left leg. Once Dan and Aimee found the shortness in my left adductor muscle, they were able to lengthen it by manual manipulation, which, in turn, took the strain off the rectus abdominus. Aimee and I shared a passion for cupcakes, so Dan’s wife, Paige, always had red velvet and banana cupcakes from Sprinkles for my sessions.
I was treated by Dan two or three times a week, for two hours at a time. It was, and still is, the most painful form of bodywork I’ve ever encountered. It was extremely slow, and very deep, with Dan using his fist, elbow, or flat hands to get into my fascia, malleable tissue that wraps all of the muscles, and all of the individual fibers and bundles of individual fibers that become muscle. In its optimal condition, fascia is a loose, moist tissue. But under continual stress, and lack of movement, fascia becomes rigid and loses its fluidity. Layers of fascia begin to stick to one another, causing “knots.” Occasionally, Dan would put a bit of beeswax on his hands, but Hellerwork isn’t anything like massage, where the masseur slides his hands over the tissue with oil or lotion. With this form of bodywork, Dan needed traction in order to connect the tissue, and he couldn’t do that if his hands were slippery. By adding mechanical energy with his fist, elbow or open hands, Dan generated heat, and in the process, lengthened the fascia where it was short.
Dan’s discovery? The fascia of the adductors on my left leg were adhered to the fascia of my quadriceps. The two fascias have different functions, and when they’re stuck together, they can’t perform individually. That was why I wasn’t healing from my abdominal injury. To treat me, he’d place my left leg, and the tissue, in the place he wanted them, then call for movement in the area of the inner thigh.
“Misty, flex your foot . . . bend your knee forward . . . step through the heel,” he instruct. He’d ask me to make a small movement, mimicking the motion I made when I walked, and as I did that, it helped create independent function between the various muscle groups.
In addition to Dan, I added another amazing guru to my team of healers: Gail Wetzler, the owner of Wetzler Integrated Physical Therapy Center in Newport Beach. I was referred to her by some of my professional beach volleyball buddies, who thought she was a miracle worker. I was extremely interested in one of Gail’s passions, visceral manipulation, which was developed by Dr. Jean-Pierre Barral, a French osteopathic physician and registered physical therapist.
In our first visit, I told Gail my abdominal strain was manifesting itself in several ways. I had headaches. I was having trouble sleeping. I was experiencing pain during daily activities, exercise, and prolonged standing. I was feeling a constant cramping, burning, and knifelike sensation in my stomach. I had inconsistent menstrual cycles.
Gail did a complete assessment and found numerous issues throughout my upper and lower back. She said that my right shoulder girdle maintained a line of tension down to my left abdomen via abdominal obliques and intercostal muscles. She said that I had fascial lines of tension in my left pelvis and abdominal muscles from my previous left knee injury. She said that I had a lack of motion in my sacrum and ilium. In addition, her palpitation of my stomach revealed my abdominal muscle layers were pulling in different directions. The most internal layer pulled completely to the back tissues that surrounded my left kidney.
One of her major findings: My left diaphragm was protecting the area of pain, but it was adapted into a contraction position, making it difficult to breathe deeply. Her palpitation revealed constriction in the connective tissue behind the left kidney. This strain was pulling on the twelfth intercostal nerve in my thoracic region, and the ilioinguinal and iliohypogastric nerves that travel behind the kidneys. This area produced the main source of my pain, she said.
Gail’s therapy consisted of an integrated approach of soft-tissue release techniques. The primary ones were organ-specific fascial mobilization (also known as visceral manipulation); functional orthopedics with musculo-skeletal release techniques; and laser therapy.
After a two-week hiatus from training, and a month off from competition, I was feeling a lot better. In late July, I rejoined Kerri at the AVP event in Hermosa Beach. All systems were go. We met at Hermosa for practice, the day before the start of the tournament, and it was very windy. Still, I decided I needed to work on my hitting. Nothing too radical, of course. However, several minutes into my hitting session, I tweaked my abdominal muscles.
For extra support I played wearing a brace around my midsection. Then, in the semifinals, my abdominals acted up, once again, but we ended up rallying to beat Barbra Fontana and Jennifer Kessy, 16–21, 21–12, 17–15. After the match, I told Kerri that, for precautionary reasons, I didn’t want to play in the fin
al. I’d made progress in rehab, and I wanted to stop before, God forbid, I made the injury any worse. So we forfeited the nationally televised final to Holly and E.Y.
With three weeks until the Olympics, I was confident I had enough time to completely heal. In the past, I’d recovered in less time. Now, I was older and wiser. I had an excellent team of healers. I knew my body, and I knew me. Frankly, I was more worried about Kerri being stressed out over my health than I was about not being ready for Athens. The more time I’d spent off the AVP and FIVB tours, the more success she’d had without me, and the more the media hounded her about my health. Will Misty be ready for Athens? Who will you play with, Kerri, if she can’t go? How long will you wait, Kerri, before you make a decision on your partner? I felt bad for Kerri. I sensed she was beginning to doubt me. I sensed others were, too.
My health had become a major topic on tour, with everyone weighing in on what they thought I would, and should, do. I knew I didn’t have to get healthy overnight. I’d qualified for Athens, and a decision on playing did not have to be made until two days before Olympic play would begin on August 15.
Kerri’s words to the media after our forfeiture in Hermosa Beach hurt me deeply.
“I don’t want to have to think about it,” Kerri told the Long Beach Press Telegram, when asked about her options should I not recover. Although she and Rachel had played well together internationally, including in the Hermosa Beach exhibition final, Kerri went on to tell the media that, in the worst-case scenario, she would likely ask Annett Davis to be her Olympic partner. Annett and her partner Jenny Johnson Jordan were the number-three-ranked team in the United States, and only two teams per country qualified for Athens.
I called Kerri and spoke to her about her comments.
“Kerri, I’m going to be fine,” I told her.
“I know, they were just pressuring me,” she replied.
Two days after our forfeiture in Hermosa Beach, the U.S. Olympic Committee’s website front page reported my injury could knock me out of the Olympics.
“I’m fine,” I told the Long Beach Press Telegram. “I just felt a pull and had to decide whether I wanted to continue to play or play it safe.”
Then came the crowning blow. A week after our forfeiture in Hermosa Beach, Kerri and Rachel won the FIVB tournament in Klagenfurt, Austria, beating Shelda and Adriana in the final. The exaggerated reports about my health reached Kerri in Europe, and she wrote me a nervous email. She told me how concerned she was about me, and said she was worried about whether I’d truly be ready for Athens. I replied succinctly: “Kerri, don’t worry. I will be there. We’re going to win this gold medal.”
All of this speculation, all of this drama, made me mad. So mad, in fact, that I wanted to prove them all wrong. All of the doubters. And I especially wanted to prove Kerri wrong. She doubted me, even though she told me she didn’t. I just wished she’d focus on herself and not worry about me. When she showed up in Athens, I wanted her to be ready to go, so there were no question marks.
Bottom line, I wanted the privilege of saying, “I’m not healthy enough to play in the Olympics.” I wanted to be the one to make the decision. I didn’t want anybody making it for me. I’d earned the right to make the final call. Who knows my body better than I do? Besides, I never would’ve gotten on a plane and flown to Athens if I weren’t healthy enough to play.
It was hard for me to sit out. But because I was older, and I’d had experience with injuries, especially an abdominal tear, I knew there was no problem with my being back for Athens. I stopped because I wanted to heal. That was my goal. In college, I would’ve reacted differently. It always was, “I don’t care if I’m hurt. I just want to play.” As you get older, though, you have to do what’s best for the team, and what’s best for you.
On August 4, Gail re-evaluated me. She deemed my body ready to play competitive beach volleyball again. I also saw Dan and Dr. Schobert, who both cleared me as well.
Now, it was time to rely on my two secret weapons: Dad and fitness coach Mike Rangel, the owner of PlyoCity and a huge proponent of plyometric training. First known simply as “jump training,” plyometrics links strength with speed of movement to produce power. Several years before, Dad had seen Karch playing in a tournament and marveled at how much quicker, faster, and more explosive he was.
“You’ve turned back the clock five or six years! What are you doing differently?” Dad asked.
Only one thing—he was training with Mike. So Dad got in touch with Mike to inquire about the possibility of my training with him. And thus began one of the most important partnerships in my professional beach volleyball career. I’ve trained with Mike twice a week, seven or eight months a year, typically at Huntington Beach, since June 2002. Dad has been there, observing and participating, at almost every workout. We’ve trained on my birthday, Mike’s birthday, holidays, on the road before tournaments, and the day after winning events. Why? Because that was the hellacious training schedule Karch was committed to, and I wanted to do everything he did because, in my mind, he was the best ever to play the sport. (Karch, who retired from competitive volleyball in September 2007, at forty-six, still trains with Mike, doing virtually the same routine he did when he was competing.)
Our workouts were just me, the sand, the sun, and medicine balls weighing between twelve and sixteen pounds. After stretching, I’d do about forty-five minutes of plyometrics—a series of hops, skips, and jumps. Mike gave me a short water break, then we went right back at it, working on volleyball drills for forty-five to ninety minutes. Passing. Setting. Hitting. Digging. From both sides of the court. We’d finish every workout with Mike’s “suicide drills.” He’d stand on a box on one side of the net, and I’d be on the other side. He’d toss a ball anywhere on the other side, even outside the court. I’d have to touch ten balls. It was a killer. Just imagine running back and forth across the court, twenty yards here, thirty yards there. As soon as I touched the ball, I’d have to stand up where I was, and he’d toss another ball. After “suicide drills,” I’d take a break, and I’d practice serving. Or Dad and I’d work on some kind of individual stuff.
After two weeks off, per my healers’ orders, I’d gone back to working with Mike to keep my conditioning and my volleyball skills on target for Athens. I exercised all of my skills without putting my body into full extension. I never hit a ball, never dove for a ball. I kept everything below my shoulders. Mike, Dad, and I devised a program that kept me aerobically fit, as well as retained my volleyball quickness, strength, stamina, and power, without aggravating my abdominals.
Sure enough, when I boarded that plane to Greece, I felt confident, healed, and ready to go. Kerri and Dane could tell, just by looking at me, that I was in great shape. Frankly, I think I surprised them both, because we hadn’t seen each other in five weeks.
We arrived in Athens, wide-eyed and eager. We were like two kids in a candy store. We were staying aboard the Queen Mary 2, the magnificent ocean liner, which was exciting and glamorous. She was docked in Piraeus and used for two weeks as a hotel ship. British prime minister Tony Blair, President George H. W. Bush, and French president Jacques Chirac were among those aboard. The U.S. Olympic men’s and women’s basketball teams were living there, too. And it was just so much fun.
Three days before our first match, I hadn’t taken a swing at a ball in practice in five weeks. Not one swing. Now, everybody on the outside began buzzing around, saying, “Uh-oh, Kerri and Misty are done!” No way. As Dad kept telling me, “Misty May at 80 percent would be as good as most players at 100 percent.” Or to use the phrase Dad used to motivate me throughout the weeks leading up to the Games: “Just because you cut the rattle off a rattlesnake doesn’t mean it’s not a rattlesnake.”
Just as in Atlanta and Sydney, the beach volleyball venue was the place to be in Athens. Raucous crowds packed the ten-thousand-seat stadium, located not far from Piraeus, and they were whipped into frenzies by energetic DJs, loud, pulsating rock musi
c, and dancing girls from the Canary Islands dressed in silver hot pants. Van Halen, Tina Turner, the Monkees, with songs from Zorba the Greek mixed in.
It was inspiring.
We were seeded number one in the Olympic tournament. Twenty-four teams were split equally into six pools of four, with each team playing each other in a best-of-three match. We opened Pool A match play on the second day of competition, with a 21–9, 21–16 win over Chiaki Kusuhara and Ryo Tokuno of Japan in just thirty-five minutes. We looked as if we hadn’t missed a beat.
At the beginning of the match, I dove on the back line for a dig, hopped up, and kept right on going. Like the Energizer Bunny. Throughout the match, I played very well, diving for balls, blocking at the net, even slamming some balls straight down off some great sets by Kerri. The victory was the perfect birthday gift for Kerri, who’d turned twenty-six that day.
Right from the start, it was clear to us that Athens might be more of a mental test than a physical one for our team. It had nothing to do with the expectations heaped upon us, but rather the large amount of time off between matches during pool play. The schedule was great for me because it gave me time to keep my abdominal strain in check. But it wasn’t great for Kerri. A racehorse, she’s always chomping at the bit.
We won our second match, two days later, posting a 21–11, 21–13 victory over Netherlands’ number-thirteen-seeded Rebekka Kadijk and Marrit Leenstra. As a comparison, in winning an AVP tournament, Kerri and I would’ve played three matches Saturday and three Sunday, tipping off at 8:00 A.M., 11:00 A.M., and 2:00 P.M. In other words, we’d have finished our second match about four hours into the first day—not four days into the tournament, as we did in Athens.
“I was telling Misty this morning, I think this is going to be a test more of emotional and mental strength,” Kerri said afterward. “When you have thirty-six hours to think about your next match, you can get a little headsy.”
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