Another great example of my drive occurred later my sophomore year, when I was competing in track. I ran the 100, 200, and 4x100- (third runner) and 4x400- (anchor) meter relays and high jumped. As a sophomore, I competed against future Olympian Marion Jones, then a senior at Thousand Oaks High, but I never beat her. In one meet, I came close, though. Well, not really. Because it was a staggered start, I was ahead of her when the gun went off. Marion caught me on the turn, and everybody jumped to their feet as if to say, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Running side by side with Marion lasted all of a second or two. Suddenly, she flipped an internal switch, shifted into a higher gear, and poof! Dad and Mom always said I had a beautiful stride, that they loved watching me run.
I did manage to outrun a couple of the best sprinters on Newport Harbor’s team, but it didn’t grab any headlines, although it did ruffle some feathers. According to Dad, the parents threatened to pull their daughters off the team if I were running the sprints. So I ran the 100 only once.
That didn’t faze me, though, because I was focused on the high jump. I stunned a lot of people in that event, including myself, and not always for the right reasons. The best high jumper in the school was my friend Tina Bowman, who easily cleared the bar with her Fosbury Flop technique, with its characteristic backward-over-the-bar appearance. When I started high jumping, I was so green, I just grabbed my knees and went over the bar as if I were doing a cannonball into a swimming pool. At one of my track meets, Mom caught my technique out of the corner of her eye.
“Who’s that ugly thing who just went over the bar?” she asked.
“Your daughter,” Dad replied.
“Oh, my God,” Mom gasped. “We’ve got to get her some lessons.”
At that time, my parents didn’t follow through with their vow to get me high-jump lessons. Instead, I worked on my technique with my friend Tina, as well as Newport Harbor’s track coaches. Eventually, I opened quite a few eyes.
In high school competition in California, you have to clear the high-jump bar at predetermined heights in order to qualify for each of the major meets (league, CIF, Masters, State) at the conclusion of the season. I competed in CIF, but I didn’t win. However, my jump did qualify me for the Masters meet. That’s where I became locked into a jump-off for a spot in the state meet. It showed everybody what I was made of. I’d never cleared five feet eight, and then, under pressure, I didn’t just clear it once, I cleared it three times, qualifying for state. Then, the following week, in the state finals, I cleared five feet ten and finished second. That jump-off taught me about perseverance, how to compete one-on-one. In the heat of battle, it’s all about which of you can outlast the other. That jump-off also taught me it’s about you and the bar, not the other person.
What helped me in high jump was positive visualization. First, my coach had us watch tapes of Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor, the 1992 Olympic gold medalist and world-record holder in the high jump, as well as top European high jumpers. Second, he had us practice jumping six feet, using springboards to get us up in the air. Falling from six feet was scary, so his theory was you had to prepare yourself for those falls. Third, when my opponents jumped, I refused to watch them. I knew their misses could derail me, that I’d be telling myself, “Uh-oh, I hope I make it over.” Instead, I’d turn away. Then, when it was my turn to jump, I’d take a deep breath, focus, and say, “Get it!”
I learned a handful of other life lessons in my junior and senior years: I learned, as I got older and better, that I couldn’t be the girl for all seasons any longer. It was important to concentrate on one sport. I was spreading myself too thin. I was running from one high school or club practice to another. I also was cherry-picking events, competing in those I deemed important and skipping those I thought weren’t as big a deal. That wasn’t fair to me, to my coaches, or to my teammates.
Before my junior year, I gave up soccer. Track was the next sport to fall by the wayside. Two incidents prompted that change. Although I had done well as a sophomore in the high jump, I struggled as a junior. That spurred my parents to seek out private coaching to allow me to more fully realize my potential. In those days, it wasn’t as common as it is now to pay for private, specialized coaching. When the school got wind of it, the athletic director became angry with my parents. He already had had a problem with us earlier that year, when I quit soccer to join my friends on the basketball team. He’d said I couldn’t jump from one team to another, and he didn’t allow me to play basketball. In his opinion, the technical coaching I was receiving at Newport Harbor was more than adequate, and he said he didn’t appreciate our going outside the school for extra coaching.
And then, there was the straw that broke the camel’s back. One weekend, I had a scheduling conflict. My Newport Harbor track team had a meet, and my Ichiban volleyball club team had Junior Olympics qualifying. I weighed my options. The Orange County meet was inconsequential, I thought, while the Junior Olympics was the most prestigious volleyball tournament for a club-level team. Only thirty-two teams were invited. You either had to be number one in your region, or you had to win certain qualifying tournaments.
I explained my dilemma to the athletic director. I told him what I thought were the pros and cons of the situation. Finally, I said, “I think the Junior Olympics qualifying is a much more important event, so I’m going to do that.” He was furious. “If you do that, don’t come back.” With that, I was thrown off the Newport Harbor track team, weeks before the state championship.
Now, with almost two decades of perspective, I realize it must have been extremely difficult for my coaches, at every level, and yes, even still today, to coach a kid whose parents were outstanding athletes and accomplished volleyball players. Not to mention successful volleyball coaches. Sadly, Dad and Mom were automatically considered a coach’s worst nightmare.
“But we’ve never interfered with any of her coaches,” Dad once told the Long Beach Press Telegram, in reference to their reputation as overly knowledgeable parents throughout my athletic career. “We’ve just kind of debriefed her.”
And I added: “He’s tried talking to coaches before, but egos get in the way. So he kind of tells me things I should try to do differently. I listen to him, because he’s smart and his coaches were good. The stuff he says makes sense. I’ve never really shut anyone out. I listen to everybody.”
In the end, being told by two coaches to only play volleyball, being forced to put all my time and energy into one sport, turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.
In 1993, my junior year, we won the Sea View League title, twice beating Corona del Mar High. Then we turned around and lost to them at the CIF Finals. We went on the road and beat some really good teams—Bakersfield, Poway (featuring six players who went on to play in NCAA Division I), and St. Mary’s (at the University of the Pacific in front of two thousand people)—to get a chance to play Corona del Mar again; we lost to them in the state title match in five games. Another crushing defeat, which I still vividly remember, in part, because I lost my head in the heat of battle.
When things got tight, I suddenly snapped, yelling at my teammates and shouting at Coach Glenn. Instantly, he subbed me out, and he told me to sit on the end of the bench. After a few points, I went to him and apologized. “Sorry, Coach, I got really frustrated,” I said. He reminded me never to lose my cool on the court. “It won’t happen again,” I said. And then he subbed me back in.
Coach Glenn made the right decision to pull me. If I’d been the coach, and one of my players had snapped like that, I’d have done the same thing. I still don’t know what came over me. Maybe I wanted to win too much. Whatever the case, my flare-up had embarrassed me, and I realized I’d have to keep my wits about me, if I ever hoped to be a great player and a world-class person.
I went on to be named the Division I State Player of the Year.
Much to my dismay, my outburst in the state final stayed with me. Not that Coach Glenn or I ever brought
it up. Rather, it was others who made it a big deal. I heard all the gossip: “Can Dan Glenn and Misty May get along? Can they win the big game?” Well, talk about making people eat their words.
As a senior, I learned a lot of important life lessons. Not the least of which was that, because I was a superstar, everything I did got examined closely, sometimes too closely, that I could be put up on a pedestal as quickly as I could be knocked off it.
That season, Coach Glenn kept repeating this phrase to me: “You will be judged on how much better you make your teammates.”
We lost only one match all season. It happened in the Santa Barbara Tournament of Champions, where we were defeated in the quarterfinals by San Jose’s Archbishop Mitty High, led by Kerri Walsh. In my mind, it was an important turning point: We became a much better team, a lot tougher and much hungrier, for having gone through that loss.
In the end, we were finally able to accomplish what had eluded us for four years: We won the 1994 CIF Division I State Championship, beating St. Mary’s of Stockton in three games. I was the 1994 Mizuno High School National Player of the Year and at the top of the Volleyball Monthly Fab 50 list. I was named Division I State MVP for the second straight year, after recording 302 digs, 92 assists, and a national-record 548 kills, and Newport Harbor finished with a 33–1 record. During my four years, our overall record was 106–12.
And I topped it all off by appearing in Sports Illustrated’s Faces in the Crowd.
While my days at Newport Harbor High turned out to be an important time of growth, both on and off the athletic field, what truly helped me grow into the top high school volleyball recruit in the U.S. in 1995 was my participation on the Ichiban volleyball club team in Long Beach. Ichiban is the Japanese word for number one, and it certainly was one of the most prominent, successful volleyball clubs in the nation in the 1990s.
While volleyball is dominated by upper-middle-class kids, Ichiban’s players tended to come from blue-collar backgrounds. Ichiban’s directors kept the cost low to make it affordable for lower-income families. The geographical area from which Ichiban pulled its players tended to entice more minorities. The directors allowed my family and others who were strapped for money to subsidize club dues through fund-raisers and snack bar duty, and to keep the cost of road trips down by traveling the most economical way. At that time, the cost to join was about eight hundred dollars. Today, the average volleyball club dues are closer to five thousand dollars, an outrageous sum of money. This prevents a lot of great kids from participating in club volleyball, which is a must, if you want to get a college scholarship. If club dues had been that astronomical when I was growing up, it would have been impossible for me to participate.
Tryouts for Ichiban were held at the end of October, when the high school season was drawing to a close. Training began in November. Competition ran from January until almost the Fourth of July, culminating in the Junior Olympics. Ichiban’s program had about a hundred girls, playing in four age brackets from 12-and-under to 18-and-under.
In my first year with Ichiban, in 1994, as a junior at Newport Harbor, I played for the club’s top 18-and-under team. I joined a team filled with All-Americans who’d grown up in the club. Throughout the season, we were one of the top two teams in the nation. We won most of the major tournaments across the U.S. Unfortunately, we lost in the 18-open gold medal match to Sports Performance Volleyball Club (Warrenville, Illinois) at the Junior Olympics in Austin, Texas.
I was extremely disappointed, but I didn’t cry. I’m not a big crier in real life. However, I did have to comfort and console my teammates. Very quickly, however, I made it clear to them that we had to use the loss as a motivating force, that we had to come back, respond, and put ourselves in the same position the following year.
My two seasons at Ichiban taught me how to be an effective leader. I have an innate ability to make those around me better and more productive. I’m the kind of athlete who leads by example, reading others’ minds on both sides of the net, anticipating many shots ahead. Assistant coach Lee Maes used to say that I had “a magic” about me, that I had “an uncanny sense” of how to play the game, that I was able to see the whole court, and that I had “a sixth sense” of how to react. I am also the kind of athlete who inspires through my ability to cultivate relationships. It’s important to me that people want to play with, and for, me. I want my teammates to follow me on the court, to respond to me when I’m playing with them. I set an example through my work ethic, my attitude and behavior, and my coachability.
True, I’m an only child, which means I can easily, and happily, spend time alone. However, I believe, inherently, I’m a people person. I lead in a subtle, effortless way. I do it with my ability to communicate, by being extremely giving of myself, which makes people feel comfortable and secure. My biggest plus is my sense of humor. I’m a total goofball. I love making people laugh, in a wide variety of ways, through my quick tongue, pranks, imitations, costumes, or skits. Ultimately, in a team sport, it’s how cohesive a unit you are that will dictate success.
My second season with Ichiban, 1995, I was one of the few high school seniors on the team. We had a great group of juniors who’d come up through the ranks, but they didn’t have as much experience as the previous year’s group. We played Sports Performance Volleyball Club again, at the Junior Olympics in Orlando, Florida. This time, though, it was in the semifinal match, and sadly, we lost and went home with the bronze medal. Here’s an interesting tidbit: Kerri Walsh and Team Mizuno (San Jose, California) won the gold medal, defeating Sports Performance in the very next match.
8
MOM
My mother is my compass.
It has been that way from the moment I took my first breath, and it will be so until I take my last.
I still have her favorite Mother’s Day card, which I wrote to her when I was four:
Why do I love my Mom?
Because she lets me steer the car when we’re pulling out of the garage.
Because she lets me help her push the shopping cart at the grocery store.
Because she lets me dress up my cats.
And most of all, I love my Mom because she lets me kill cockroaches.
Dad is the type who lets you burn your hand before telling you the fire is hot. Afterward, he’ll thoroughly explain the situation. Mom, meanwhile, made sure you knew all of the ramifications ahead of time, as well as how to avoid every single pitfall.
In stories written about me, Dad always is referred to as “Butch May, the beach volleyball legend,” and he gets most of the credit for my career. But Mom deserves a lot of credit, too, much more than she ever has been given. True, Dad was the only parent present when I won two Olympic gold medals. He has worked with me for countless hours in training sessions on the beach. He has traveled to tournaments across the globe. He’d watch me in warm-ups, and if I were having issues, he’d fix them before the matches started. He has given his opinion on coaches, teammates, opponents, trainers, and healers. He has brainstormed with me about ways to improve my game, inspire my partners, and defeat my opponents.
However, there’s so much more that has to be taken care of behind the scenes, and that’s where Mom came in. She handled the family’s important paperwork. She kept detailed calendars of our schedules. She paid the bills on time. She double-checked my homework assignments. She made me redo papers that weren’t well-written or well-researched. She planned our sports-related trips.
My mother was the sensible, organized parent.
Friday nights, heading into weekend club volleyball tournaments, she’d say as I paddled off to bed, “Your lunch will be packed, along with everything else you’ll need, and it’ll all be waiting by the front door in the morning. We’ll meet up with you later.” Saturdays and Sundays, she’d run the snack bar at my club tournaments to defray the cost of dues, registration, and travel. Dad helped her unload the car, then he’d rush off to the beach to play a few games before heading back to catch m
ine. If I had a couple of matches off, I’d pitch in behind the snack bar counter. I couldn’t have afforded to play club volleyball any other way.
I loved the snack bar. We had some yummy items. Hot dogs with chili. Nachos with cheese. Mom and I went to Costco to purchase the food. She served fresh doughnuts and cinnamon rolls in the morning. She made turkey croissants for lunch. Mom put in long, long hours. It was a labor of love. One of the things I regret is that I didn’t thank her enough. Some of the best times of my life were working the snack bar with Mom.
Even Dad would wholeheartedly agree: Mom was the responsible parent.
After all, she brought him kicking and screaming into the computer age. One day, they pulled up to an ATM. Dad got out of the car and punched in a bunch of numbers. As they were waiting for the money to spit out, Mom yelled, “Well?”
“Nothing is happening,” Dad replied.
“Where’d you insert the ATM card?” she asked.
He’d put it in the deposit slot.
Being the child of two outstanding athletes, I am always asked, “What part of you is your father and what part is your mother?” Well, I’ve got Dad’s butt and Mom’s hands. I’ve got both of their gorgeous legs (as well as my maternal grandmother’s). I’ve got Dad’s laid-back, Hawaiian approach to life. I’ve got Mom’s intelligence and honesty—she always was in the background, telling it like it is. Mom was very studious. She’d read something once and get it. In college, she helped tutor my teammates and me in various subjects. When I was on road trips, she went to my classes and took notes. She loved school. When it comes to education, I take after my Dad. If he were weighing what to do in his free time, “Beach or books?” he’d always choose beach, and so would I.
My mother was, and always will be, the foundation of our family.
It took a lot of courage for her to marry Dad. Her parents thought he was a beach rat, that he wasn’t good enough for her, and they never completely accepted him. There always was an underlying uneasiness in Dad’s relationship with my grandparents, and I could sense Mom’s disappointment in the situation. When the four of them were together, and her parents set her off, she’d look at Dad and shake her head. He’d bite his tongue, and she’d thank him later for that.
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