Relentless Spirit

by Missy Franklin

  Mom and Dad pretty much left the decision up to me. We weighed all the pros and cons together. But, truthfully, there weren’t a whole lot of cons on the Berkeley side of the ledger.

  DAD: I was so enormously proud of the way Missy went about this process, but at the end of the day it came down to this gut feeling she had about the school. Her mother and I couldn’t really argue with that, but at the same time I was torn. There were a lot of contrasts between Regis and Cal. Regis was small and nurturing and intimate, and a Catholic school to boot. And the Berkeley campus was sprawling, with an enormous student body—anything but nurturing and intimate—and when you read about some of the nonsense Berkeley students can get up to, it felt like more of a faithless environment than a faith-based one. But this was Missy’s call. That’s a hard thing for any parent to accept, but here there was a piece to it that’s unique to parents of athletes like Missy. It’s different from the typical college send-off experience, I think. Here we had this child who’d excelled at her sport and made it all the way to the Olympics, where she’d won four gold medals. She did this on her own, but she did it under our roof—on our watch, so to speak. And now we were entrusting her future, her career, to the care and feeding and training and decision making and imprint making of these strangers. Teri and her coaching staff, they seemed like good people. But there’d be all these people getting into Missy’s head who she’d never been exposed to before. Professors, advisers, coaches, team psychologists, trainers, all with their own agendas. For the first time, D.A. and I would have no control, no input over what they were saying to our little girl, or how they were saying it, or how Missy was taking it all in and learning from it.

  Clearly, Dad was freaking out a little bit. Mom, in her own way, was freaking out as well. She had a hard time with the concept of coed bathrooms! But sometimes if you want your parents to grow you just have to let them go, right?

  My “Welcome to College” Moment

  FRESHMAN ORIENTATION—BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

  I don’t care how “ready” you are to go to college, or how much you’re looking forward to it, the moment sneaks up on you. It catches you looking the other way—your parents, too, sometimes. At least that’s how it was in our house. In fact, the way my schedule worked out, I was all the way on the other side of the country when it came time to move into my dorm room at Cal; that’s how unprepared we were to make the transition.

  I was in New York with my dad at the US Open. I’d agreed to cohost this great event called Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day, a fun, celebrity-packed program that celebrates the legacy of tennis legend and humanitarian Arthur Ashe. It’s a concert, exhibition, and kids’ party, all rolled into one. The event is always held on the Saturday before the start of the tournament, in late August, which was right around the time I was supposed to start school. I don’t think we even bothered to check the calendar when I agreed to participate, but it looked like such a blast and I wanted to be a part of it. Ariana Grande was performing, along with the Wanted, and there were appearances by a bunch of great tennis stars, like Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic. The stadium was packed with kids and families. Probably the most thrilling, most humbling moment was when Michelle Obama came on the stage and thanked me for the way I represented the United States in London.

  Pinch me, people!

  Starting school was probably the furthest thing from my mind that day at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, New York, but one of the reasons I didn’t have to think about it was because Mom was all over it. Literally, figuratively, and every which way you can imagine. Oh, I was thinking about it, too, in my own way, but I wasn’t really paying any attention to the logistics. That was Mom’s job. You see, while I was in New York with Dad and my uncle Doug, she was out in California, moving me into my dorm. Really. People look at me like I’ve got a screw loose when I tell them this story, but this was the only way we could make everything work, and Mom was happy to “take one for the team.” It never even occurred to me that there was anything weird about it, or that other students and families didn’t do the same thing. And it’s not like I wasn’t involved at all. We’d packed up all my clothes at home, and ordered bedding and linens and other stuff I’d need from a local Bed Bath & Beyond in Berkeley, so the plan was for Mom to fly to California, collect our order from the store, and start setting up my room.

  Move-in day was a bit of an ordeal, but not in the ways you might think. The manager of the swim team let Mom into the dorm, and he’d set it up so two of the seniors on the swim team were available to help unpack the car and haul my gear up to my room, so it’s not like she had to deal with any heavy lifting. What she did have to deal with, though, was the wave of emotions that came over her as she did her thing. She was such a mess! The slightest thing could set her off—she told me later she was crying the entire time. My roommate, Kristen Vredeveld, hadn’t moved in yet, so she couldn’t really give me the deets, but a few people on my floor told me Mom was pretty weepy. She’d gotten a hotel room near campus, and my father and I were supposed to arrive that night on a late flight, spend the night with her in the hotel, and say our good-byes in the morning. While she was waiting for us, these really nice Cal alumni recognized her in the lobby, and when they approached Mom to say hello and tell her how excited they were that I was coming to Cal she just exploded into tears. It was such an emotional time for her, sending me off to school—just as it would have been a really emotional time for me, if I’d allowed myself to sit still and think about it. Who knows, maybe I was distracting myself from any kind of separation anxiety by keeping so busy.

  The really hard part for Mom came the next day. She and Dad took me to my dorm room early, and gave Kristen a hug. We met some of the other students on my floor for the first time. They’d all moved in the day before, so they’d had a bit of a head start, but I hit the ground running. Everyone was super friendly, super welcoming, and most of us were in the same situation, living away from home for the first time, not really knowing anyone. I kind of wanted to kick my parents to the curb and get started on this next phase of my life, but then I found out there were some team meetings and other welcome-type sessions I had to attend, and that Teri wanted my parents to accompany me to one of them. This was unexpected. My parents had a flight to catch, so we huddled as a family and decided Dad would head home as scheduled and Mom would stick around another day to join me at this meeting. This was where the transition became harder still for my poor mom, because the meeting was with the chief of campus police and what he wanted to talk about caught us a little bit by surprise. The meeting went on and on. There were all kinds of safety issues the security people felt the need to discuss with me specifically, since I was a well-known athlete. They wanted to keep me from getting any unwanted attention.

  So on its face, then, this was meant to be a useful, informative session, set up to help me feel more comfortable in this new environment, but as we listened to the chief’s presentation, Mom started to freak out. To tell the truth, I started to freak out, too, but mostly for how it all must have sounded to her.

  The chief of campus police said, “This isn’t Denver anymore.”

  He said, “Things are a little different here. There’s going to be a lot of people out to get you, so you have to watch your back.”

  Then he gave me his cell number and told me to call him if I ever needed anything, and at any time. He said, “If you ever get into trouble, be sure to call right away. I’ve seen students in tough situations and I’d want to help.”

  This last statement sent Mom over the top. Here she’d been having a hard enough time just letting go and sending me off to live on my own, and now she had to listen to this campus police chief talk about drug use and violent crime in and around Berkeley. He had her thinking about the vagrants and miscreants in the community surrounding our campus. And he put it out there as a given that all students drink and do drugs, and that I wou
ld be falling in line right behind them.

  The guy was just doing his job and playing devil’s advocate. He was giving me the lay of the land and letting me know I needed to make good choices and that the campus police were there to help me if I needed them, but Mom and I kept flashing each other these looks, like we were wondering if Berkeley was the best place for me after all.

  At one point, I leaned in to Mom and whispered, “Why does he think I’m some wild party girl? Am I giving off that vibe?”

  She squeezed my arm, and I got that she understood. This wasn’t me. The person this police chief was describing, that would never be me. And the campus he was describing, that wasn’t the Berkeley community I’d wanted to join. I could see that Mom was trying to play it cool, but underneath she was shaken by what she was hearing. Drugs? Vagrants? Arrests? People out to get me? She told me later that she wanted to grab me and head straight for the airport.

  Really, I think it took every ounce of restraint in her mom genes to keep from saying, “You don’t belong here, Miss. This is a terrible mistake. Why don’t you come home on the plane with me and we’ll figure this all out tomorrow?”

  Of course, that wasn’t about to happen. It was unsettling, to have to listen to this man’s negative spin on what I could expect to find at Berkeley, even though we understood that the officer was just trying to send me a clear message. He wanted me to know that campus police had my back. That’s all it was, really. But I think Mom and I both knew that the real reason we found it so alarming was because we were afraid to let go. Underneath all this necessary talk about security issues, there was the talk Mom and I should have been having, just the two of us, about how much we were going to miss each other.

  Remember, it was my father who’d cut the umbilical cord when I was born. Now it was my mother’s turn. And here was this campus police person making it sound like I was about to enter some den of iniquity, making this moment way harder than it needed to be, while underneath, deep down, Mom and I were too busy trying not to cry. She and my dad had been with me every step of the way, and I wasn’t too worried about the two of them no longer being involved in my swimming life because I knew they’d find a way to make it to most of my meets. No, it was the day-to-day that was about to slip away from us—at least, that’s what we both thought—so to have to listen to this security guy run through all these different worst-case scenarios . . . well, it seemed to me a little beside the point. A part of me wanted to stand up and tell him he didn’t have to worry about me making good decisions, here on in.

  My parents had already taken care of that.

  SEVEN

  HAVING MY BACK

  In success, my parents have been an enormous source of support, encouragement, and great good cheer.

  In struggle, they’ve been my salvation.

  And in those moments between success and struggle . . . well, that’s when they’ve really had the biggest influence on me, because that’s where we live our lives.

  The best way to illustrate the role they continue to play in my life—a role they will always play!—is to highlight a time when I was down so low it looked like I’d never see up again. I guess we should call that a lowlight, right? If you’ve followed my career, you’ll know there was one giant hiccup on the way to my second Olympic Games. Actually, to refer to it in this way is to strip the incident of its power and its impact, but I’ve chosen to file it in my memory like it was no big deal. Of course, it was a very big deal at the time, and reducing it in this way is probably just a defense mechanism or evasive tactic. Who knows, maybe it’s some kind of motivational strategy. But the truth is, if I dwelled on the enormity of this “hiccup” I might never get out of bed in the morning, or step to the starting blocks with the kind of certainty and confidence I need to swim at my best, so in my head I’ve set it aside and moved on. And yet if I’m out to truly share some examples of how the strength of family helped me to work past an occasional difficulty, I suppose I have to spend some time on this giant hiccup, and to tell it like it was, not like I’ve chosen to remember it.

  So here it goes. . . .

  It was August 2014, my very first summer swimming with Teri, which meant it was my very first long-course season under her tutelage. We were still getting used to each other. In a lot of ways, it’s a whole different sport, long course versus short course. I was used to working with Todd, but Teri had her own approach, and she’d been very successful with it, so I was open to whatever she threw at me.

  Still, I was a little hesitant heading off to the Pan Pacific Championships in Queensland, Australia, that year because I wasn’t really where I wanted to be. The Pan Pacific meet (or Pan Pacs) is a key marker for any swimmer on the international stage. It sits on our calendars like an exclamation point. It’s held every four years, in the “even” year before the Summer Olympics, and it falls at the exact middle in our Olympic training cycle, so for a lot of us it signals the start to our final training push. It lets you know in no uncertain terms where you stand, what you’re up against, and where you’re falling short.

  And, significantly, it’s also our last chance to qualify for the FINA World Aquatics Championships (or worlds), to be held the following year in Kazan, Russia.

  Teri had been named one of the head coaches for Pan Pacs, with Bob Bowman, so she would be my coach there, too.

  One thing you should know, when I say I wasn’t where I wanted to be it’s not a knock on Australia. Gold Coast, Queensland, was beautiful. The Aussies were so welcoming, so friendly. But when you fly halfway around the world like that, it takes some getting used to. You can’t help but feel a little out of your element—and here I was, far, far away from home, not exactly firing on all cylinders. Not just yet, anyway.

  Now, I might have been far, far away from home, and a long, long way from my routines and my comfort zone, but my parents made sure that the essence of home was always close at hand. And that essence—always, always, always—was the two of them. They made this trip, as they made so many others, and even though I didn’t get to see them all that much, it was a reassuring, reaffirming comfort to know they were there. When you switch things up and set off on a new path, it helps to hold on to the constants in your life—your touchstones, your anchors. Just having my parents around gave me a great competitive advantage, because I knew that in their eyes I could do no wrong. Whatever was going on in the pool, I could look up and pick them out in the crowd—Mom always had this special area where she’d like to sit, and she and Dad were such physical opposites, they were easy to spot. It’s like my eyes were drawn to them, so I’d always look to them for support, validation, reassurance, whatever I might have needed at the time.

  All I needed was a smile or a thumbs-up from one of these two and I was good to go.

  Typically, when you travel such a long distance, you give yourself an extra day or two on arrival to get acclimated. For this trip, we had an even bigger cushion, because there were eight days of training camp before the meet actually started. I felt only so-so during the last two days of training camp. I wasn’t really hitting my paces, wasn’t really myself. But, physically, I felt fine. I couldn’t have pinpointed anything “off” about my fitness. I might have been disappointed with how I was swimming, but I felt fine. But then I noticed during warm-ups that my lower back seemed super tight. It wasn’t something to worry about so much as it was just something to notice. I thought, Okay, that’s interesting. Truth is, I didn’t really think about it at all, except to recognize the tightness and come up with a plan to ignore it. I figured I would just get on the table after my warm-up and let the massage therapists work on me. Whatever was going on, they’d figure it out and set me right, same way they’d always done.

  Coincidentally enough, I’d been starting to feel pretty good in the water. A little closer to where I wanted to be. A little more comfortable. I’d had a couple of strong workouts, was finally hitting my paces,
so I was excited about that, but then I went to do a backstroke start and that’s when it happened! I pulled up into the start position and all of a sudden my back went into spasm—total meltdown spasm. I’d never experienced anything like it. The pain was excruciating, almost unbearable, but even more than that was the fear that came along with it. I was terrified that this was happening, too scared to even move out of that start position. Has that ever happened to you? Your body tells you it can’t move, and you’re so completely freaked out by this sudden intense pain you’re afraid to even flinch because you think it’d make the pain even worse? I had no idea what to do. There was about a four-foot gap between where I’d lifted myself and the surface of the water, so I had no idea how I was even going to get out of the pool. Plus, it’s not like anybody else had even noticed, at this point. During warm-ups, there’s so much activity in and around the pool, there’s no one set of eyes on any one swimmer, so everyone was just off doing their thing.

  Instinctively, I looked into the stands, to the area where my parents liked to sit. But, of course, the stands were mostly empty. It was just a workout session. Mom and Dad were back at their hotel. A different hotel from where we were staying, by the way, since Team USA likes to keep the athletes away from distracting influences like our fanatic parents and family members. I knew they weren’t at the pool, but I sought them out anyway, as if by reflex, hoping against hope that they’d magically appear because I really, really needed to see them. I was frightened, and a reassuring look from them would have meant the world just then.

  But I was on my own in this, at least for now.

  Three or four coaches and trainers lifted me out of the pool and lay me down flat on the pool deck. I couldn’t talk, because I was in a kind of trance. A state of shock, I guess. I was frozen.