Two days later, in our second match in pool play, we knocked off Cuba’s Dalixia Fernandez Grasset and Tamara Larrea Peraza, 21–15, 21–16, in thirty-seven minutes. They were the only women’s team to have competed together in three Olympics. They’d finished ninth in Sydney and Athens. Kerri wore her wedding ring, but covered it with flesh-colored athletic tape to make sure it wouldn’t fly off. We were playing what Karch described as “May-Walsh volleyball,” the two of us on cruise control, and I was getting a lot of pop on the ball.
Two days later, we beat Norway’s Ingrid Torlen and Nila Ann Hakedal, 21–12, 21–15, in thirty-seven minutes, finishing pool play with a 3–0 mark and advancing to the Round of Sixteen, while holding our number two seed overall. We’d made it through pool play without losing a set and without allowing any team more than sixteen points in a game. Kerri was dominant at the net, finishing with sixteen kills and seven blocks. Hers were the only blocks of any player in the match. She also had three aces. I finished with eight kills, two aces, and three digs.
However, the match had exposed one of our weaknesses. For years, teams had served me because I was the shorter player. But the Norwegians had decided to serve Kerri. She’d had trouble with her serve receive. (When you aren’t served very often, it’s hard to get in a rhythm. So it was a good strategy.) At one point in the match, nineteen serves had gone to Kerri, only three to me. She’d been aced a handful of times and had committed an error on another.
As in Athens, Kerri admitted it was difficult adjusting to the slow-paced Olympic schedule, competing every two days during pool play. She was used to playing every day on the professional beach volleyball tours—sometimes as many as three matches a day.
“Three matches in six days, that’s mentally wearing on me,” she told the Associated Press. “That’s one of the challenges of the Olympics. We’re so eager when we get on the court. You have to bottle up the energy and make sure you don’t wear out.”
To counteract that, Troy suggested we emulate an AVP schedule, practicing the morning after our matches. That way, we always were playing; we never took a day off. We kept ourselves busy, we kept ourselves playing, which I think made the time go by faster.
In the meantime, I was enjoying the pace of the Olympics, especially the fact that we were practicing or playing in the mornings, which gave us the bulk of the day free to hang out with family and friends and embrace the culture. Thinking about it now, my China experience was unlike any other I’d had while competing in the sport. Many athletes feel enormous pressure being in the Olympics. Kerri said she certainly did, but that’s what makes her such a great athlete. She pours her entire being into competing. However, as the Games unfolded, I felt less and less pressure. The Olympics felt more like a playground to me, in every way imaginable. I was everywhere, doing everything. I was on the Great Wall, decked out in a huge Chinese straw hat, bumping a volleyball. One minute, I was sledding over the Great Wall’s slopes on a toboggan; the next, I was dancing down its dozens and dozens of steps. Sandy Malpee also brought along an official Misty May bobblehead doll to photograph on the Great Wall. And, oh, yes. Mom was right there with us, her ashes traveling in a little bottle.
Most athletes would’ve trained, eaten, and slept, and then, perhaps, spent a little of their remaining free time with their immediate family. Most athletes would’ve focused on the task at hand and not gotten distracted by the outside world. But I was determined to win a gold medal in experiencing the Olympics. I went to every single event I possibly could go to. And it wasn’t like I was taking limos to the venues, or I had tickets in private suites, where I could sit in air-conditioning with my feet up. No, I was part of the crowd, and I loved it.
For me, for my journeys through volleyball and life, it has always been, and it always will be, all about people. The people I touch, the people who touch me. That’s who I am. I’m not one to sit and worry about myself, and how it’s all going to affect me. For me, it’s all about living life and being there for others.
You need to have an element of selfishness in order to be great at what you do, for the most part. At least most athletes feel that way. Athletes have to be selfish about what they eat, about what they drink, about when they sleep, about how they spend their time away from the court, in order to be great at what they do. You have to take care of yourself first, in order to be great on the field.
I’m the antithesis of that. Yes, I work my tail off. At the height of my Olympic training, I was in my car from 7:00 A.M. until 7:00 P.M., running from workout to workout, bodywork session to bodywork session. I’m prepared. I’m fit. I’m ready. However, I always make sure to have an extra minute for somebody. I always make sure I’m able to do things away from the court and the venue. I’m always prepared to be completely selfless with my time. That’s something I learned from Dad and Mom. They taught me it’s possible to be an elite athlete, but at the same time, to be loving and generous with yourself, your time, and your athletic gifts.
Our biggest scare of the tournament occurred on August 15, Kerri’s thirtieth birthday. We overcame five set points in the first set to beat Belgium’s Liesbeth Mouha and Liesbet van Breedam, 24–22, 21–10, to advance to the quarterfinals. At six feet four, 195 pounds, Mouha was the second tallest player in the tournament, and it was the first time in Beijing Kerri had played against somebody taller than she was. Women’s beach volleyball nets are seven feet four and one eighth inches high, and Kerri’s reach is eight feet one. However, she really had to stretch to get the ball over the higher blocker, which gave van Breedam time to chase the ball down behind Mouha, which wasn’t good for us.
After we’d finally kicked it into gear at the end of the first game, we played much more like ourselves. We won the clinching second game in only fifteen minutes, in characteristic Misty-Kerri fashion. We’d jumped to a 6–2 lead. Then we went up 9–5; Kerri got the serve and went on a 7–0 run, putting away the match.
Next up, the number three seed, Brazilians Ana Paula Connelly and Larissa Franca. We approached our quarterfinal match against them with trepidation. They’d formed their team a day before the Olympic competition began. Larissa’s usual partner, Juliana Felisberta Silva, had been forced to withdraw from the tournament due to a knee injury. It’s always a challenge to play a new partnership. Although our two teams seemed well matched, talentwise, it was clear from the outset that Ana Paula and Larissa had not yet found their rhythm as a team. Kerri scored on five blocks against them. She also had eleven kills. I finished with ten digs, thirteen kills, and an ace. We won, 21–18, 21–15, to advance to the semifinals.
“We came in expecting the unexpected,” I told the media. “Our coach gave us a great game plan.”
On the AVP tour, coaches are allowed to sit courtside, but for FIVB tournaments, they can’t. They have to sit in the stands, and they’re not supposed to talk or make any noise for fear of cheating. They can’t even clap. But they can videotape. When we weren’t competing, Troy would be at the venue, shooting video of our competitors. The night before our matches, we’d meet to watch videotape, and then we’d all go our separate ways. In the mornings, we’d get worked on by Pericles, our physiotherapist, then we’d head over to the venue. We’d run a little bit. Then Troy would stop us, and we’d go back over the scouting report. After that, we’d get into our warm-up, and then it was game on.
From the outset in the semifinals, against Brazil’s number six seed Talita Antunes and Renata Ribeiro, we were on fire. We jumped out to a 5–1 lead and increased it to 12–5 as the Brazilian errors started to mount. We reached set point at 20–11, and a serving error made it 20–12, before my kill won the set. The second set was closer, as the score was tied at 6–6 and 10–10. Two Brazilian errors increased our lead to 12–10. After two errors (one by us, one by them), plus a Brazilian point, the score was 13–12. But then we went on a 6–0 run, making it 19–12. Renata and Talita held off the loss for two serves before eventually making an error to end the match. We w
on, 21–12, 21–14, in just thirty-eight minutes.
The Brazilians were the best team we’d played, and this was the best we’d played. I’d come down with a cold and a fever, but you wouldn’t have known it just by looking at me. I’d practiced the morning before, then had seen the team and IOC doctors. They’d prescribed antibiotics, and I’d spent the remainder of the day resting. I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’ve always played better when I was sick. It makes me concentrate harder.
Before the match, we’d had an interesting discussion with Troy. He’d thought serving Renata, who was on the right side, was the best strategy for beating the Brazilians. We’d disagreed, saying we preferred to serve Talita on the left. We ended up winning the debate, which gave us a little extra motivation. (As far as the Brazilians’ serving went, they were encouraged to serve Kerri because they’d gotten points off her at the end of the first set.) Meanwhile, the Brazilian team also contributed to our motivation. We’d arrived on the practice court sixty-six minutes before the start of our match. Brazil pulled rank, kicking us off the practice court and banishing us to an outer court. Talk about waking up a sleeping bear.
We were one step closer to our goal, and NBC’s Heather Cox asked us afterward if the reality of these Games was beginning to sink in.
“We just beat a great Brazilian team, and we’re going to the Finals,” Kerri said, her voice cracking with emotion. “It is what we wanted to do. We’ve been fighting so hard since Athens, and now it’s going to be China. This is what I’d hoped for, USA versus China in the final, and it’s going to be tough, so we made it, and that’s the first step.”
We weren’t sure yet which Chinese team we were going to face, but we did know that the venue would be packed with Chinese fans, and that they’d have the home-court advantage in the final step in our quest for history.
“We feed off that,” I told Heather. “We love the energy. We love the crowds. And as I’ve been joking around all year, ‘We don’t know what they’re saying, but they’re cheering for us.’ They’re saying, ‘USA,’ even though they’re saying, ‘China, China.’”
Before I left the court, I pulled out a black film canister and sprinkled Mom’s ashes on the court. I saved half of the canister’s contents for the gold medal match.
“You can’t leave home without her,” I said, tapping the film canister. “But she’ll stay here.”
Just one match away from history, I wanted to summon up all of the love, support, and good vibes I could get—from those around me, as well as from up above. My entourage had expanded as the Games went on, with Anya flying in for the last week of competition after having been in Japan on a soccer mission, and Debbie jetting in to surprise me for the semifinals.
The day before the gold medal match, we met with Troy in Kerri’s hotel room to discuss our game plan against China’s Tian and Wang, who’d beaten the number two Chinese team to reach the final.
“We don’t need to play the match of our lives,” Troy told us. “We know what these girls are going to do. We know what we’re capable of doing. Let’s just get out there and play the way we can play. Don’t let it become anything more than that.”
We talked about my partner being better than Tian’s partner; we talked about Kerri’s partner being better than Wang’s partner. We talked about all of the little things in the Chinese team’s game, then compared them to all of the little things in our game. We talked about how we were better at every facet, not by a ton, but by enough. He reminded us that we had an hour to prove that we were better, so if we made an error, we must just keep pushing.
“Let your skills be better than theirs over the course of an hour,” he told us.
Then we watched videotape of Tian and Wang. It was a good, calm meeting, but it wasn’t anything special. It wasn’t Troy trying to bombard us with lots of video. It wasn’t his trying to fire us up with a “Win One for the Gipper” pep talk. We didn’t need him to do that.
The night before our gold medal match, I became unusually reflective about my career, thinking about how grateful I was to all of those people who’d helped me get to this moment in time. Dad. Mom. Matt. Kerri and her family. My grandparents. My parents’ Muscle Beach crew. My coaches. My teammates. My trainers. My healers. The list was endless.
President Bush tried to call us at about 10:30 P.M. to wish us well, but Al Lau, our team leader, had told the White House secretary that we were asleep and refused to put the call through. (We both were still awake, and we gave Al a hard time about it the next day.)
Between 12:30 and 1:00 A.M., I called Mike Rangel’s cell phone and left him a message. He still has it, and it went like this:
Hi, Mike, it’s Misty. Just getting ready to go to bed. Wanted to say hi before we play tomorrow. Thank you for all that you’ve done for us. I know why you’re not answering. You’re in either one of two places, either you’re playing poker at the casino, or you’re meeting with your agent about your book signing about the autobiography of David Hasselhoff.
When I woke up in the morning, I discovered Dad’s text message: “No matter what happens, we all came here because we love and support you. Win or lose, we still love you.”
It made me feel very good, until I looked out the window and saw a torrential downpour. The rain was coming down violently, and there was electricity in the air. But none of us were worried. Not me. Not Kerri. Not Troy. And we weren’t the least bit concerned we’d selected white bikinis to play in. (Our power color, black, wasn’t an option.) If the water made them see-through, well, so what? We’d practiced and played in crummy weather throughout our eight years together. We’d never, ever run from a day at the beach. We’d beaten this Chinese team, in the rain, in 2007, in an FIVB event in Norway. We’d played in 120 degree temperatures in the sand in Phoenix, and we’d played when there was frost on the court in Northern Europe. We’d addressed difficult situations early in our career, and no matter what the conditions were, it always was to our advantage. If we’re in deep sand, we jump better. If we’re in hard-packed sand, we’re going to be faster. If it’s raining, our ball control will come through.
How could the rain change our game? Well, rain does make the ball heavier, so your strategy may change a little bit because of that. Also, you can’t wear sunglasses, so sometimes when you’re hitting the ball, your eyes can telegraph where you’re going to go with it.
Although she was nicknamed “Six Feet of Sunshine,” Kerri loves playing in the rain, and she’d actually had a dream the night before that we’d won the gold medal in a downpour. Meanwhile, I thought the rain was fitting: We could get right into the jungle and play, just battle it out, just be fierce, relentless warriors, just be ourselves.
I’m superstitious, so I went through the same routine that morning as I had for all our other matches. I’d be up and eating breakfast by 5:45 A.M., then I’d get physical therapy. I wore my hair the same way, the same hairpins and hair tie, same headband. I had to put on five strokes of deodorant under each arm, because five is my lucky number.
Kerri, Troy, and I met on the bus and rode to the venue in dead silence. Kerri and I both were listening to our iPods. Every day, throughout the Games, I made sure to listen to Kanye West’s “Stronger.” Then I put my iPod on scramble, and I listened to Michael Jackson, Prince, and anyone else who could pump me up. Troy didn’t say a word; he knew we understood what we had to do. At one point during the ride, I started crying, overwhelmed we were about to realize our dream of playing for our second Olympic gold medal, and incredibly sad Mom wasn’t there to witness it. When we got to the venue, we went straight to the practice court and went through our regular warm-up routine. Troy steered clear of us. About thirty minutes later, he reiterated a few key points. He finished with what he’d told us before every match since he’d begun to coach us: Remember the three Bs. Battling. Believing. Breathing. And with that, we all knew nothing more needed to be said.
Meanwhile, Dad and my Misty’s Misfits crew had arrive
d at the venue at the crack of dawn. They’d all awakened by 5:00 A.M., they were so anxious about my gold medal match. Ever since I’d begun playing professional beach volleyball, Dad and his pal Jim Steele had had a ritual, where they’d get to the beach by 6:00 A.M., so they could get all settled in. They’d planned to watch the bronze medal match, which was held before ours.
Venue volunteers passed out pastel-colored rain ponchos to the crowd. Folks huddled under umbrellas, clutching Chinese and U.S. flags. Not that any of those things kept anybody dry. Half an hour before we were to start, I called Eileen Clancy McClintock on her cell phone and asked where Dad was. I told her I wanted to see him. Eileen understood it was important for me to be with Dad before I went onto the court, just as it was important for him to be with me. This was a once-in-a-lifetime moment, and I needed to share it with him. We’re all little girls when it comes to our dads, and I needed to hear him say, “Win or lose, we love you. Just go out and play.” He always senses exactly what I’m feeling. It’s uncanny.
“What do you think?” I asked Dad, making a reference to the torrential rain.
“It’s a good day to win an Olympic gold medal,” he replied.
And then we gently touched foreheads. Dad says he read somewhere that it’s a tradition of Buddhists in the Himalayas, that touching foreheads is their way of honoring another person. So he’d started doing it with me several years before. Now, we don’t hug or kiss before matches, we lovingly bump foreheads.
Right from the start, the match was tight, but the rain wasn’t a factor, the relentless play of the Chinese women was.
“I think it’s harder being a fan, sitting out in the rain, than being a player,” I told the media. “This is just another reason why we play in bathing suits.”
The Chinese women took the lead at 6–4 in the first set before we came back to tie it at 6–6. We ran the score to 12–10, but then they rallied to even it again at 13–13. Finally, with the score tied at 17–17, my three straight kills gave us a 20–17 cushion. At that point, China called time-out to slow our momentum. Then a kill by Wang made it 20–18. The Chinese saved one set point on brilliant teamwork—Wang dropped the ball down the line off a set from Tian on her knees—but I followed with a kill to close out the first set.
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