“Headsy” was Kerri’s term for having too much pent-up energy.
We defeated Sona Novakova and Eva Celbova of the Czech Republic, 21–17, 21–17, in forty minutes to advance from pool play with a 3–0 record. We secured our top seed in the Round of Sixteen, the sixteen-team women’s elimination bracket, which would begin the next day. The maddening, every-other-day match schedule was over. Now, it was a single-elimination tournament—one loss and you’re done—and the Olympic medals were within sight.
We opened the Round of Sixteen by defeating Wang Fei and Tian Jia of China, 21–11, 21–18. Next, in the quarterfinals, we defeated Guylaine Dumont and Annie Martin of Canada, 21–19, 21–14. And that set up a semifinal match between the two U.S. women’s teams. We’d be facing the fourth-seeded Holly and E.Y. This meant that the U.S. women would be guaranteed at least a silver medal, after having failed to reach the medals podium in Atlanta and Sydney.
We were feeling confident about the matchup. We’d won sixteen of the previous nineteen meetings with Holly and E.Y. I knew Monday’s semifinal match would be an emotional one for me and my family. Especially for Dad, who was the only person who’d accompanied me to Athens. My parents both had hoped, prayed, and believed that Holly and I’d get into the medal round in Sydney. It would’ve been such a sweet moment if Mom could’ve experienced my winning an Olympic medal before she’d passed away. But it wasn’t meant to be. We’d finished a disappointing fifth. Mom had suffered through Holly’s and my loss, so sick that she couldn’t sit on top of the action in the stands, but instead had to find a seat, off to the side, in the shade. However, that didn’t mean Mom was going to miss out on this Olympics. In fact, I was going to make sure she had the best seat in the house.
I was very nervous before the semifinals, which was very uncharacteristic for me. We’d gotten a manicure, and we’d asked that our nails be painted red, white, and blue. I’d tried to calm myself down by visualizing our match, as I did as a high jumper in high school, by listening to music on my iPod, including the Beatles and relaxing instrumentals you’d hear in a spa, and by reading a chapter from The Da Vinci Code. Worst of all, I couldn’t eat, which is very unlike me.
We defeated Holly and E.Y., 21–18, 21–15, in forty-one minutes. I played like an absolute maniac: I raced around the court, chasing down wild shots and thrusting my hands, fists, and forearms in position to save rallies. They fought off two match points before Kerri chipped a left-side angle shot that rolled across the top of the net and dropped in the front corner, too far out of reach for Holly.
Afterward, Holly and E.Y. gave us hugs.
“Bring home the gold,” E.Y. said. “We’re expecting it.”
“You deserve it. Go get it!” Holly said.
I really hated having to play another U.S. team, and especially Holly and E.Y., whom Kerri and I both liked and respected very much. I’d much rather have faced them in the gold medal game, not the semifinals. Of course, in the final, if there’s one team you want to win, it’s you.
After our semifinal victory, I sprinkled some of Mom’s ashes on the court, then mixed them into the sand that Kerri and I had owned throughout the tournament. The ashes were in one of Mom’s old prescription pill bottles—in fact, the label bore a prescription for medicine taken by cancer patients for nausea—and they’d been given to me by Dad. The whole tournament he’d been trying to get me to do it, but I kept saying, “Not yet, not yet.” Finally, the moment felt right. I’d been waiting for it since she’d passed away in May 2002. Everyone else’s family was there to watch them compete at the Olympics, why couldn’t my Mom be, too?
We would play for the gold the following day, Tuesday, against Shelda and Adriana, who’d dominated Australians Natalie Cook and Nicole Sanderson, 21–17, 21–16, in an earlier Monday match. The Brazilians had won the silver in 2000.
“I am happy, but it isn’t finished yet,” Shelda said after their match.
Shelda and Adriana were the all-time winningest pair on the FIVB tour, with thirty-one victories. They were a team I’d looked up to since my days with Holly. They were the Peles of volleyball in Brazil. Kerri and I always had admired their style of play; we patterned ourselves after them. However, we led the series between the two teams, 13–7, and we’d won the last six straight matches after losing to them in the bronze medal match in Berlin last season. But they were looking to redeem their disappointment at winning silver in Sydney. They were very experienced, and they knew how to prepare for the big game. They’d played for an Olympic gold medal before, so they knew how to handle the pressure. We were certain they weren’t going to fall easily.
Meanwhile, Holly and E.Y. would play Natalie and Nicole for the bronze.
From the beginning of the gold medal match, Kerri and I were in complete control. It was as if somebody (Mom?) had put wings on our feet. I was everywhere on the court, coming up with fifteen digs, never botching a serve, and repeatedly setting up Kerri well at the net. We won the first four points of the first game and were never threatened throughout, winning 21–17. Then, we trailed 3–4 in the second game before outscoring the former five-time world champions, 18–7, en route to a 21–11 victory. It took just forty-two minutes.
We’d worked perfectly together, in perfect harmony like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Kerri was the windmill at the net; I was the deceptive one, with the ability to look one way and tap the ball crosscourt to an open spot. When she backpedaled from the net, I slid forward to split the court in half. Kerri set the tone in the first game, shoving the ball down the Brazilians’ throats. When Shelda and Adriana tried to work the back of the court, I retaliated by pulverizing them with kills or crosscourt winners.
We’d become the first U.S. women’s team to win gold in beach volleyball, and along with Holly and E.Y., who’d won the bronze, became the first American women to medal in the sport. We were the most dominating team on the AVP and FIVB beach volleyball tours, and we were the most dominating team at the Athens Olympics, never losing a game in seven matches. Since forming our partnership in 2001, Kerri and I had gone 179–27 internationally with fifteen titles, and we had a 75–3 mark on the AVP tour, with thirteen titles.
Kerri fell to her knees, and I ran to embrace her. We both fell backward in the sand. I’d tackled the hell out of her, and I didn’t care if I’d broken both of her knees in the celebration. After this, she was going to have lots of time to rest. Interestingly, the picture of us tackling each other in our bikinis raised quite a few eyebrows, and it became as talked about and as iconic as the photo of soccer star Brandi Chastain whipping off her shirt and exposing her sports bra to celebrate the USA winning the 1999 Women’s World Cup. Ours was the photo of the Athens Olympics. It stunned people to see two women rolling around in bikinis, skin touching skin. But hey, when the U.S. softball players struck gold, they piled all over each other. We’d just won an Olympic gold medal! How should we have expressed our elation? By standing across the court from each other and giving the thumbs-up sign? By high-fiving each other? I don’t think so. Get over it!
I found Dad in the packed stadium, and I darted toward him. I was so excited that I realized if I connected with him using our special version of a high five, a gentle, loving Buddhist forehead touch, I would have split our heads wide open. So I threw my arms around him instead. Then, it was Mom’s turn to share in the gold medal celebration. I pulled out the prescription pill bottle and joyously sprinkled her all over the sand. Now, everybody in my family was there. My dad was there. My mom was there. That meant a lot to me. I don’t think I would have ever gone to practice when I was a kid if it hadn’t been for my mom. She worked with me a lot. She and Dad always made sure I had the best stuff, even though we couldn’t afford it. They always brought out the best in me.
Suddenly, I felt a huge hole in my heart. I missed Mom very much at that moment. She had been a catalyst for Kerri and me becoming partners, and now she wasn’t there to see her dreams become reality. She would have been so p
roud of me. She would have loved to put my Olympic gold medal around her neck. And she especially would have been excited to meet Matt. My heart ached. I felt sorry she’d never had the chance to share these things with me. At that instant, I would’ve traded everything, including the Olympic gold medal, if I could’ve touched her one more time.
Since she’d passed away, I felt as if she’d influenced my matches from heaven. There’d be no wind, or anything, and I’d hit a bad shot, and the ball would go over the net. It was very weird. I’d have no clue how I pulled it off. And then, I’d whisper, “Mom?” She loved playing volleyball so much that I figured she was still at it, batting the ball back and forth up above—and pulling strings for me down below. Throughout the Olympics, I felt as if she were the angel on my right shoulder. (I already had her initials, a pair of angel’s wings, and a halo tattooed on my left shoulder.) I think she even had a hand in the performance of my tennis-playing cousin Taylor Dent, who’s three years younger than I am. He’d won four Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) singles titles during his career, but his most memorable performance occurred at the 2004 Olympics. He’d made a run all the way to the semifinals, losing to eventual gold medalist Nicolas Massu of Chile. Even more memorable was his bronze medal match against Chile’s Fernando González, which he lost, 16–14, in the third set.
Mom, it seemed to me, was everywhere.
Dad was completely spent after the gold medal match. He was a big, mushy puddle of emotions. He’d reminisced often during the Olympics about how he and Mom had selected Kerri to be my partner. He’d talked about Mom a lot, he’d thought about her constantly. And he was so superstitious that once we started winning, he never took off his green Florida Marlins T-shirt. Dad had missed Mom deeply in Athens, even though he’d kept trying to argue that she wouldn’t have totally enjoyed being there. Mom and I had stopped in Athens on a world cruise with my grandparents, when I was about eight years old, and it wasn’t one of her favorite cities back then. There were (and still are) stray dogs and cats everywhere. Before the Olympics, to beautify Athens for the world stage, officials rounded up tens of thousands of strays and relocated them, and the thought of that would’ve driven Mom crazy.
Matt was pretty wiped out, too. He’d cried hysterically in his Colorado Springs hotel room, while receiving a play-by-play of the gold medal match from a reporter in Athens via telephone before preparing for a Pacific Coast League game between his Albuquerque Isotopes and the Colorado Springs Sky Sox. He estimated he’d cried for at least twenty minutes. Even when he watched the replay later, already knowing the outcome, he said his palms sweated profusely.
I kissed our engagement photo after the gold medal match, then I called Matt. And wouldn’t you know it? He started tearing up again. The Isotopes had been on a twelve-game road trip during the Olympics, which meant Matt had to cheer me on from a variety of minor league baseball outposts. We’d phoned each other every day, at least once, just to stay, “I love you.” But even if Matt could’ve somehow finagled a trip to Greece, he told me later he wouldn’t have wanted to go. He said he’d wanted me to be able to concentrate on one thing, and one thing only, winning the Olympic gold medal.
Was I the only person who wasn’t exhausted after the gold medal match? Was I the only one who wasn’t blubbering away? Sheesh. For once, I bet I was more amped up than Kerri. I was flying high, floating on a cloud, living life at 310 percent, with an angel on my right shoulder. After Prince Albert of Monaco, a member of the International Olympic Committee, put the Olympic gold medal around my neck, I kissed it, and then I studied it. There was an angel on it, an image of “Winged Nike,” the ancient goddess of victory. I decided it was a sign from Mom.
18
GOLD MEDAL AFTERMATH
One of our family friends, Rafer Johnson, the 1960 Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon, told Dad that winning a world championship changes your life, but that winning an Olympic gold medal means your life is never the same. I didn’t truly comprehend what Johnson meant until I arrived home from Athens.
You know those TV commercials, with athletes at their moment of triumph answering that famous question, “You’ve just won the Super Bowl! What are you going to do next?” Well, my first stop after winning the Olympic gold medal wasn’t Disneyland (although that is one of my favorite places on earth). Instead, I took a trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to see my future husband. Matt showered me with bouquets of flowers and balloons. I threw out the ceremonial first pitch in his Albuquerque Isotopes’ 10–2 loss to the Colorado Springs Sky Sox in Isotopes Park. That was more nerve-racking than any of our matches in Athens.
After that, I had gigs scheduled on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, MTV Video Music Awards, Daytime Emmys, Today, and a handful of other TV shows. And, every chance I got, I mentioned I was waiting for an invitation to host Saturday Night Live.
And then there was the rousing welcome-home surprise party, attended by my family, friends, neighbors, and kids from down the block. Taped across my two-car garage was a big brown paper sign, with WE LOVE YOU MISTY! in red, white, and blue. The driveway was packed with people, including my Long Beach State head volleyball coach Brian Gimmillaro, my Newport Harbor High volleyball teammate Jeanette Hecker, and former Olympians Susie Atwood and Joan Lind Van Blom. Atwood, a swimmer, won a silver in the 200-meter backstroke and a bronze in the 100-meter backstroke in 1972. She’s my insurance agent. Van Blom, a rower, won a silver in 1976 in single sculls and a silver in the coxed quad sculls in 1984. She’s a member of the Long Beach Century Club.
I felt as if I were on that old TV show, This Is Your Life.
“What I say is that it takes a village to raise a child,” Dad told the Long Beach Press Telegram. “Let the child do the work and have the village give her support. There are many people responsible for this.”
It was a prelude of what my life was about to become, because in the first month after Athens, I wasn’t home in Long Beach for more than three days total.
Believe it or not, before I could catch my breath, I was back out on the AVP tour. That’s right, just nine days after we’d won the Olympic gold medal, Kerri and I played in a tournament in Chicago. We still had a domestic pro beach volleyball season to complete. Fueled by adrenaline, Kerri and I won the event, as well as the AVP’s Las Vegas tournament a week later.
Our next trip, to Honolulu, Hawaii, two weeks later, for the AVP Best of the Beach Championships in Waikiki, was a homecoming for us Mays. It was the first time in twelve years the AVP tour had had a stop in Hawaii. It also was the first time Dad’s extended family would get to see me play in person.
Only the 2004 AVP season’s top men and women were invited. Unfortunately, my Hawaiian relatives weren’t going to get a chance to see me and Kerri play together. The Best of the Beach event separates regular partners, with each player having a different teammate every match. It gives volleyball fans a chance to experience never-before teams and matchups, and it’s also a lot of fun for us athletes to mix it up a bit.
Besides playing in the Best of the Beach, Dad and I had come to Hawaii for a more important reason, to fulfill Mom’s dying wish that her ashes be scattered in various places she loved. Dad had waited two years to bring Mom home with him to Hawaii because he just couldn’t bring himself to believe she was truly gone. It took him even longer than that to go through all of her belongings, give them to me, donate them to charity, or pitch them into the trash. Even today, her bedroom sanctuary has barely been touched. A part of him still thinks she’s going to come waltzing through the door.
Sunday, the day after the tournament, our dearest friends and family members met in St. Louis Heights for a ceremony overseen by David Lyman, at the home of Gordon Pi’ianaia. Both were Dad’s longtime friends. We scattered Mom’s ashes in a beautiful spot overlooking Manoa Valley. Mom had loved it from the moment she saw it. As we threw the ashes out, they blew right back at us.
“Maybe Barbara doesn’t want to leave,” Lyman said.
We laughed, all covered in gray ashes, feeling Mom’s presence.
From that moment on, we knew that whenever we were visiting the Hawaiian Islands, or we looked out over the Manoa Valley, it was just another peaceful way of saying, “Although we can’t physically touch you, Mom, we know that you’re spiritually present.”
Three weeks later, in mid-October in Santa Barbara, we beat Holly and E.Y. in the final and wrapped up the AVP season. Despite the barrage of commitments away from the beach, and a lot of helter-skelter travel around the country, Kerri and I still were able to post a 14–1 match won-loss record and win three AVP tournaments post-Athens. I was proud of the way we were handling our new stature as Olympic gold medalists. Living in a fishbowl, being recognized everywhere, and having crazy, crammed schedules, was all very new to us. It took a lot of patience, smiling, and sleeping standing up to cope with it all, but it was well worth it.
In addition to all the perks, Kerri and I also had been thrust into the role of iconic figures in beach volleyball, and along with that lofty stature came great responsibility as role models and ambassadors. The day after winning in Santa Barbara, Kerri and I were in New York to accept the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Sportswomen of the Year award in team sports. Nine days after that, I was inducted into Long Beach State’s 49er Athletic Hall of Fame. I squeezed in a stint as the celebrity grand marshal of the City of Bellflower Liberty Day Parade, and a few weeks later, it was announced I would be the grand marshal for the Belmont Shore twenty-second Christmas Parade in Long Beach.
When we first met, Matt and I had made a pact that we’d never morph into “star cravers.” He hadn’t changed, from the day he first was promoted to the majors by the Florida Marlins, June 2, 2004. I’d promised him then, and I’d promised him again after winning the 2004 Olympic gold medal, that I wouldn’t ever change either. Not even if Saturday Night Live called. Hint. Hint.
Misty Page 24