Misty

by Misty May-Treanor

  We’d get going around 8:00 A.M., often practicing against guys, including Karch, Steve Obradovich, Tom Pestolesi, and Jay Hosack. We’d finish up about 10:30 or 11:00 A.M., and at that point, Kerri and I would head off in different directions, to other workouts (Pilates, weightlifting and core training, cardio work, Mike Rangel’s plyometrics, and so on), bodywork (massage, Hellerwork, chiropractic, and so on), or media interviews, photo shoots, or marketing and sponsorship commitments. Most days, I was in my car, driving all over Southern California, from 7:00 A.M. until 7:00 P.M.

  Because Troy had heard our partnership was strained in 2006, he also emphasized improving the emotional side of our game. He talked about our having common goals, about our winning a second Olympic gold medal, about our dominating the sport, and about our setting records that would never be broken. He talked about what all of that would mean to us in terms of our legacy, not fame- and fortunewise, but personally. He talked about what it would mean to us in our hearts and souls.

  Troy said that he felt our families, especially my father and Kerri’s mother, both of whom were driven, demanding, and opinionated, were adding more stress to an already pressure-packed situation. He was right. Truthfully, in many ways, they were more consumed with our winning a second gold medal than we were: Dad wanted it for me; Marge wanted it for Kerri. Troy instructed us to tone down our families’ expectations.

  “Despite our differences, and no matter what our fathers, our mothers, or our groups are saying, they are getting in the way,” Troy told us. “Everybody must be united in a common goal.”

  Now, I realize that Troy spent a portion of the beginning of each practice helping us bond with each other. We’d sit off to the side, stretching and chit-chatting, talking about what we had planned for that day (and what we’d done the night before), laughing and giggling, and often we’d start practice ten or fifteen minutes late. To an outsider, I’m sure it looked like an utter waste of time, but I really believe it was the best-spent time of our workouts. Those ten or fifteen minutes helped us get back our team chemistry. Although we were the best team in the world, Troy understood we still needed our time to bond, we still needed our social time, and he built that right into our warm-up.

  When I first began training with Troy, a couple of flaws really stood out, the most obvious being that I was an inconsistent passer. He harped on it from the first video session. He showed me over and over on video, “Here’s what you’re doing,” and the video was a real eye-opener. I’m very open to listening to input; I’m always trying to pick up new things.

  In addition, Troy worked extremely hard to find my favorite approach angle, because, he pointed out, at times I was approaching with my right foot, or what is called being “goofy footed.” Footedness in sports refers to an athlete’s preference for putting the left or right foot forward, and most often is used in skateboarding, snowboarding, and wakeboarding. Regular stance, regular foot, or simply “reg” refers to a boarder for whom it feels natural to ride with the left foot in front. This stance is called “regular” because it is found more commonly among participants of these board sports. The opposite is called “goofy foot,” which refers to athletes who prefer to lead with the right foot.

  Troy wanted me to approach the same way every time. He wanted me to approach from the right side, always planting my left foot forward—left, right, left—even though I might get a little bit crossed up. He wanted a standard approach because, he believed, doing it differently every time threw me off. The normal indoor approach is to take the big stride with the right leg and close with the left. If you’re right-handed like me, the order of your last three steps should be left-right-left. If you’re left-handed, the order of steps is exactly the opposite, right-left-right. When a right-handed hitter approaches right-left-right, that’s referred to as “goofy footed.” That’s what I used on the beach (so did Karch), because I felt it helped me attack the line better. Troy said my goofy footedness meant extra ground contact, albeit very slight, which cost me in the height and force I got in my vertical leap. Goofy footers, he said, took longer to get up in the air and hit the ball less hard.

  Troy did plenty of tweaking with our other skills. Take setting, for example. He showed Kerri and me video of how we were setting when we were in control of our game. Then he pointed out the inconsistencies. Again, he said he wanted to define how we were going to set the ball, time and time again. Was it going to be left foot forward? Was it going to be right foot forward? Troy and I decided that I’d do it right foot forward every time, unless I couldn’t get my right foot forward.

  While Troy and I were refining my skills, I solidified my goals in my mind. Not only did I want to be the most physically dominant player in the sport, but mentally I always wanted to be a second or two ahead of my opponents. I’m already a step ahead, I believe, thanks to my unique ability to see and feel what my opponent might do. But now, I wanted to be a step ahead of everybody in the sand, too. I never, ever wanted to be caught off guard.

  To achieve that goal, after working out with Troy, later in the day, Dad and I would meet Mike Rangel at Huntington Beach and go through his killer plyometric beach volleyball boot camp. When Kerri and I were going through the rocky period in our relationship, one of the things that helped me get through all of the emotions was focusing on Mike’s conditioning sessions.

  Every time Mike mentioned he’d given Karch a new drill, I had to do it, too. When I changed my passing in 2006, I went to Karch’s workouts with Mike and watched him pass for hours. I mastered the brutal “Twenty Drill,” because Karch had mastered it. Mike stood on one side of the net, serving the ball to Karch on the other side. Karch had to pass twenty balls out of twenty serves. He has done twenty out of twenty a couple of times. The best I’ve ever done is eighteen out of twenty. Mike says the average elite player gets nine, maybe ten.

  After every practice, I always thanked Mike for his hard work, and of course, I teased him about being a dead ringer for Baywatch actor David Hasselhoff. One season, there were seven AVP tournaments in a row where I gave Mike the business, tacking up a sign on a bulletin board near the tournament schedule: COME MEET DAVID HASSELHOFF SIGNING AUTOGRAPHS IN FRONT OF THE LADIES ROOM.

  Kerri and I approached the 2007 season as a work in progress. New coach. New skills. New attitude. That mind-set served us well in Miami, Florida, when we lost in the semifinal of the season’s debut event on the AVP tour to number two team E.Y. and Nicole in just forty-three minutes. We didn’t panic. We just stuck to our game plan and knuckled down. We went on to win the next two AVP events, beating E.Y. and Nicole in both, first in Dallas, then in Huntington Beach.

  In addition to refining our skills, Kerri and I believed that the other aspect of our partnership that could improve was our communication, both on and off the court. After a rough 2006 season, and just three tournaments into the 2007 campaign, we were beginning to see the fruits of our labor in that arena, too.

  “It was a tough year,” Kerri told USA Today, referring to the challenges our partnership endured in 2006. “It was the first time it really felt like a business. We never saw each other off the court. We didn’t have that friendship or intimacy going.”

  Although I was notorious for not being a great communicator, Kerri also admitted to Dig magazine that she’d had to work on her own communication skills.

  “Casey [Jennings, her husband] and I have talked a lot about Misty and my personality on the court,” she told the magazine. “I’m the cheerleader, and Misty is very quiet, and I sometimes go agro and overcompensate. Casey has pointed out that I may not be helping Misty by doing that, and it’s definitely not helping me. He’s very tactful. I’m a sensitive girl.”

  After that, we went on a tear, winning eight consecutive AVP tournaments, including the Hermosa Beach event in mid-May, where our victory over Tyra Turner and Rachel in the final added another credential to my résumé—the winningest female player in beach volleyball history. The victory in Hermosa
Beach was my seventy-third, which surpassed the previous record held by Holly. After the record-breaker, I told the fans who hung around for our victory ceremony that while records were great, I preferred keeping a low profile.

  “I don’t like to be the center of attention, unless I’m on the dance floor,” I joked.

  Our victory in the AVP event in Louisville, Kentucky, a week later, provided us motivation for the rest of the 2007 season, thanks to E.Y.’s comments to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

  “They’ve been my rivals for several years,” E.Y. told the newspaper. “We want to win tournaments. In order to do that, we have to beat them. … It’s not like anyone is afraid of them anymore.”

  Oh, yeah? I saved that sports section—I still have it in my archives—because it was such great bulletin board fodder. All told, in 2007, we won thirteen of fifteen AVP tournaments.

  In the meantime, internationally, we re-established our dominance. We won seven of eight tournaments, including the 2007 FIVB World Championship in Gstaad.

  Because our main goal was to qualify for Beijing, as in the two years leading up to Athens, we wanted to concentrate on playing in FIVB rather than AVP tournaments, because that’s where the qualification points from our eight best finishes were earned. We also wanted to accumulate our qualification points as quickly as possible. Word got out that we planned to skip the AVP event in Charleston, South Carolina, in mid-June, to play in the FIVB event in Korea. We thought it was important to play overseas to see and get a feel for our competition before playing in the Grand Slam in Paris, the following weekend. Grand Slams were worth double qualification points, and we didn’t want to blow that opportunity. However, the AVP put pressure on us to play domestically, threatening legal action against us if we didn’t live up to our contractual obligations. So because we didn’t want to get sued, we grudgingly played in Charleston, then jetted off to Paris. We won both tournaments, by the way. And I indulged myself with my Parisian favorites: coffee and Nutella crepes, every day after I was done playing. Oh, that creamy chocolate hazelnut spread. Decadent and divine.

  Just as in the years leading up to Sydney and Athens, the Olympic qualifying schedule was outrageous and exhausting.

  Kerri and I had very different ways of keeping ourselves grounded. She loved to read. Or should I say speed read? She had an ability to go through books like no other. She’d often get up early in the morning, walk around whatever city we were in, find a little café, and pull out a book. She also loved to go shopping. I can’t believe how she was able to fit into the types of clothes she did—I don’t think I’ve ever been that skinny, not even at birth. She always looked amazing; I could never see myself wearing what she can.

  Meanwhile, I’d keep myself entertained by watching complete DVD collections of Showtime’s Weeds, ABC’s Desperate Housewives, and HBO’s Carnivale. I loved to stay at the tournament site all day—I couldn’t tell you what I did because I have no clue—and I enjoyed hanging out with our medical staff. I also got a kick out of recording video travelogues of our trips, creating skits complete with characters and accents from the countries in which we happened to be playing. I especially enjoyed recording running gags about going in search of my favorite Starbucks nonfat vanilla lattes in all corners of the globe. Nicole Branagh was my coproducer.

  There never was a time we didn’t come to play. The best example of our keen mind-set occurred at the 2007 World Championships in Gstaad. We were in the throes of a long, grueling stretch of tournaments. We’d already played thirteen weeks in a row, in a combination of AVP and FIVB events. We’d just won in Montreal, Berlin, and Long Beach, where I was so whipped I’d told the Long Beach Press Telegram, “I could use a personal time-out,” before running to catch another plane. Now, here we were, in the final at Gstaad, getting ready to face the number one Chinese team Tian Jia and Wang Jie. A month earlier, we’d beaten them in an FIVB event in Paris. Then, the following week, they’d beaten us, in the rain, in the semifinals in Stavanger, Norway, in what would turn out to be our only loss on the FIVB tour in the 2007 season.

  When he awakened the morning of the Gstaad final, Troy wondered if, after more than three months of running around the world and always raising our performance to the highest levels, we’d be sharp enough to pull out another victory. He recalls saying to himself, “After all these weekends in a row, and these two tough FIVB Grand Slam wins, now they’re going into the final against the best China has to offer. It would be so easy for them to be tired and out of it.”

  Sure enough, we crushed Tian and Wang, 21–16, 21–10, in thirty-nine minutes for our third straight FIVB World Championship. It was a victory to savor, not just at that moment, but later when we were in Beijing.

  It also was a weekend to savor, because of our American sweep, with Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers, the top U.S. men’s team, capturing the men’s gold medal. It was the first time in history a Brazilian men’s team wasn’t on the world championship medals podium. And there was another reason it was a beach volleyball event unlike any other. More than a hundred thousand spectators had converged upon Gstaad to witness the most important international tournament in the qualification process for Beijing.

  In addition to $1 million in prize money, the tour stop also offered double qualification points. Plus, Gstaad boasted a twelve-thousand-plus-seat stadium, which rivaled the Chaoyang Park Beach Volleyball Stadium, the Olympics venue in Beijing.

  Our 2007 season statistics were mind-boggling. We’d compiled a match record (international and domestic) of 129–4 and a set record of 258–25. Kerri and I were named Sportspersons of the Year by the FIVB. The AVP named us Team of the Year, and we won the Crocs Cup Championship, given to the most outstanding team on the AVP circuit. And of course, we’d also reached our ultimate goal: We’d qualified as one of the United States’ two women’s beach volleyball teams for Beijing—the other was E.Y. and Nicole—leading all women’s teams in qualifying points.

  21

  SECOND OLYMPIC GOLD MEDAL

  As soon as the 2008 calendar year began, we felt the Olympic gold medal pressure mounting. It was much more intense than four years before, because, this time around, we were one of the best beach volleyball teams in history, male or female, and we were heavily favored to win. The demands, the expectations, the opportunities, the aspirations, all were ratcheted up a hundred times. This time around, we were simply Misty and Kerri. This time around, we were trying to make history.

  Adding to the pressure we were feeling was the fact that Kerri still was struggling to regain strength in her right shoulder, after having had rotator cuff surgery in November 2007. Dr. Schobert also had removed bone spurs, bone chips, and scar tissue. She hadn’t taken any hard-driven balls in practice in January, February, or March, and so as we neared the beginning of the AVP and FIVB tours, she wasn’t ready. In my opinion, we didn’t have to play any 2008 regular-season tournaments, at home or abroad. We could wait until Beijing to step onto the sand, if that’s what Kerri’s shoulder dictated. After having struggled with abdominal problems before the 2000 and 2004 Olympics, I knew full well that if we wanted to win the gold medal, we both had to be 100 percent healthy.

  But Kerri, being Kerri, wanted to push it. I relented a bit, suggesting we use the first AVP event in Miami in mid-April as a test run for her shoulder. If that tournament taught us it would be better for Kerri’s shoulder to play every other weekend, then that’s what we’d do. But she had to promise to be honest with me. I told her she had to promise to tell me if she needed a break.

  “Our success in Beijing is dependent upon your pacing yourself,” I impressed upon Kerri.

  Well, we bolted right out of the starting gate, coming on like gangbusters and winning three straight AVP tournaments. But what’s that old saying about the best-laid plans? On Sunday, May 4, the day after we’d won our third title, in Huntington Beach, Kerri’s shoulder flared up in the twenty-five-thousand-dollar Cuervo Gold Crown series winner-take-all event, a
playoff of the top four teams in the points standings. We withdrew after beating Annett Davis and Jenny Johnson Jordan in a morning semifinal, sending shock waves through the beach volleyball world.

  “If she needs to pull out, pull out,” I told the Associated Press. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this together. . . . She needs to take the appropriate measures and make sure she’s okay because there’s a bigger goal in mind.”

  Kerri proclaimed she’d be ready to play the following weekend, in Charleston, South Carolina, going so far as to predict she’d be “good to go” by Thursday. However, the day before her self-imposed deadline, her shoulder wasn’t any better, so we withdrew. Then we skipped an FIVB event in Seoul, South Korea.

  When we finally returned to the AVP tour, May 24, in Louisville, Kentucky, Kerri’s shoulder was good to go. We sailed through the tournament. And from there, we kept right on going, winning six straight AVP events and three consecutive FIVB Grand Slams over the next two months, including a victory over China’s number one team, Tian and Wang, in the final in Berlin, 21–18, 22–20, in forty-five minutes. While we’d been called the greatest female beach volleyball team of all time, now we had another title to prove it: By winning the Berlin Grand Slam, we’d earned our thirty-second career FIVB World Tour gold medal, surpassing legendary Brazilian tandems Shelda Bede and Adriana Behar and Emanuel Rego and Ricardo Santos.