Misty

by Misty May-Treanor

  Most professional athletes look at the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NBA Finals, or any other major championship in their particular sport as one of the goals they’ve set for themselves, and they’ll check it off their list when they reach it, then keep moving forward in their career. They don’t take the time to enjoy the entire experience, or understand its full meaning, because they’re so focused on winning. They don’t see the beauty and the majesty that surrounds them because they’ve got blinders on. They forget to open their eyes and ears, their hearts and souls; they forget to be in the moment, to drink it all in, to embrace every last ounce.

  Since I’d already won an Olympic gold medal, I decided to approach Beijing as one of life’s blessings. I was going to revel in the experience. If Kerri and I ended up winning a second gold medal, that’d be great. If we tried our best, but came up short, that’d be fine, too. For me, the 2008 Olympics were about creating lifetime memories.

  A few weeks before leaving for Beijing, Kerri and I were among a dozen or so Olympic and Paralympic athletes invited to the White House, July 21, for a send-off party hosted by President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura. It began with a reception in the Rose Garden, and we looked like such all-American kids, decked out in USA polo shirts and blue jeans. He urged us to “compete swifter, higher, stronger,” but also to be mindful that we would be “ambassadors of liberty” to the people of China and elsewhere. Afterward, we separated into groups for media interviews.

  “Follow me this way!” President Bush said.

  “But we have an interview to go to,” we replied.

  “I want to see you in the Oval Office!” he insisted.

  Seriously, how can you argue with the leader of the free world?

  So several of us followed the president to the Oval Office, where he happily gave us a personal tour, telling us about his desk, saying that President Roosevelt had installed a front panel, so nobody knew he was sitting behind it in a wheelchair. He told us every president is allowed to decorate the Oval Office in his own style, then proceeded to talk about interior design from the carpeting up.

  Eventually, we got around to formal introductions. We’d been instructed to say our name and our sport, then step aside so we could have our pictures taken with the president. Well, I was the last athlete in the group to meet him.

  Kerri went before me.

  “Hi, Mr. President, thank you for inviting us to the White House. I’m Kerri Walsh,” she said.

  President Bush smiled and mimicked hitting a volleyball.

  Kerri nodded that, yes, he’d gotten it exactly right.

  “Hi, Mr. Bush, thank you for having us, my name is Misty May-Treanor,” I said.

  “What do you do?” he asked.

  “Oh, I play beach volleyball,” I said. “I play with Kerri Walsh. I play defense.”

  And then, to help remind him of who I was and what I look like on the court, I gave him a good example of the camera shots the TV guys always take of me in my defensive stance: my backside. I bent over in front of him, put my hands on my knees, and stuck out my butt, ever so slightly.

  “Doesn’t this look familiar?” I joked.

  “Oh, I know who you are,” he said, chuckling, “You’re the one with the tattoos.”

  From that point on, the Prez and I were buddies.

  I couldn’t help thinking, as I was waiting in the receiving line to shake his hand, about Forrest Gump’s presidential moment. When Forrest shakes President Kennedy’s hand, he says, “I’ve gotta pee.” After I’d stuck out my butt, I thought, “Who in their right mind bends over in front of the president of the United States and asks, ‘Doesn’t this look familiar?’ What was I thinking?” Oh, well. That’s just me.

  It was a day to remember, no ifs, ands or butts. I’d never been to the White House before. I’d always been competing when presidents had hosted the Olympians after the Games. The celebratory homecoming event hadn’t ever fit into my schedule. So it was very nice. We toured the White House, complete with all the history lessons. It’s a lot bigger than you think.

  As Kerri and I were leaving to go back to the hotel to change into dressy clothes for the dinner event that evening, we spotted a ball on the East Lawn. We simultaneously gasped: “A volleyball!” We grabbed it and started peppering on the lawn. What a thrill. A couple of Secret Service agents told us the volleyball actually belonged to Barney, President and Mrs. Bush’s beloved Scottish Terrier. We learned later that the First Dog was quite fanatical about sports, that he loved playing with volleyballs and golf balls, as well as observing horseshoe matches.

  That evening, before we were seated for dinner, the president and the First Lady argued over whose table I was going to sit at. The First Lady won, but the president still managed to finagle a table full of tall, gorgeous, female Olympians. I guess that’s an unwritten presidential perk.

  The menu, printed on an off-white card, with the presidential seal and the Olympic rings at the top, included pea soup with duck pastrami cheese puffs; crispy black sea bass with butter beans, tomatoes, and corn; and summer greens with cucumber and carrot ribbons, dressed with a roasted artichoke vinaigrette. Each course was accompanied by a special glass of wine. And to top it all off, there was a fabulous dessert called the Olympic Torch, a dark chocolate tart with raspberries and a brown sugar Olympic flame, which was served with a glass of Chandon Blanc de Noirs. Music was provided by Seldom Scene, one of the most influential bluegrass bands of the last thirty years. It was one of those nights I’ll never forget.

  It’s important that you have a little history about my Forrest Gump moment in the Oval Office because it foreshadowed what has come to be known in Olympic and beach volleyball lore as “the Bush slap.” President Bush traveled to Beijing for the Olympics, meeting with U.S. athletes before we walked in the Opening Ceremony. The next day, after taking a brisk mountain bike ride—he described his workout as “unbelievably difficult; that’s why they call it an Olympic Course”—the president checked out various venues. And he tried his hand, so to speak, at beach volleyball.

  On the Chaoyang Park practice courts, on Saturday, August 9, about an hour before the beach volleyball competition was scheduled to begin, the president bumped the ball around with Kerri and me.

  It was clear President Bush was a very good athlete and very competitive. But truth be told, his passing needed a lot of work: He hit a pair of balls straight, but off his knuckles, then he opted not to dive after one of the balls I returned. Thank God. Kerri and I held our collective breaths for several seconds, thinking he might actually try to save it from hitting the beach, and we weren’t the only ones who had that thought. His Secret Service agents perked up, ready to spring into action. The photographers surged forward, ready to snap the perfect shot. His entourage watched nervously, envisioning him in a face plant in the sand. Suddenly, the president began waving his arms in large, looping circles, pretending to fight to keep himself upright.

  “I think if he’d take his shoes off, he’d be a stud,” Kerri told the media.

  “We’ve got to get him some shorts and a tank top,” I added. “Give him a little more time, and he’ll be good.”

  As he was leaving, I had another Forrest Gump moment.

  “Next time, I’ll come back and bring my tattoos,” the president joked.

  “Like that one?” I kidded, turning my back and sticking out my butt. Again.

  The president brushed his hand across the small of my back, giving me a friendly slap on my large tattoo, and he joked about getting a tattoo of his own one day. And thus, “the Bush slap” was born. Before he left, he posed for a photograph standing between us, and as he put his arms around us, he proclaimed, “I’m with the champs right here!” Oh, how I hoped the Prez was prophetic.

  The following day, Kerri and I were poised to begin our quest for back-to-back gold medals. There were twenty-four teams each in the men’s and women’s brackets. The teams were broken into six groups of four
for pool play—we were in Pool B—with sixteen teams advancing to the single-elimination round. We’d moved out of the Olympic Village, and into the Hilton hotel, which was closer to our venue.

  In the four years between Athens and Beijing, the popularity of Olympic beach volleyball had grown enormously; everybody wanted to join in the party. It’s not a regimented sport for spectators. If you want to stand up the whole time until somebody yells at you to sit down, you can. If you want to dress in costume, you can. You can wear a bathing suit. You can get out of your work clothes. It’s a loose environment.

  Announcer Chris (Geeter) McGee, who travels with us on the AVP tour, kept fans stoked, whipping the crowd into a frenzy with his charged-up play-by-play. A DJ got everybody’s blood pumping, blaring music throughout the match, mixing oldies, Southern California beach tunes, and current hits. Scantily clad, bikinied dancing girls elevated the temperatures of the male fans, shaking their booties during breaks in the action. And on top of that, there were cheerleaders. No wonder U.S. Olympic basketball teammates Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Jason Kidd came to watch us at various points throughout the tournament. Tennis star Lindsay Davenport, a friend of the family, stopped by, too.

  Before the tournament began, Karch, NBC’s beach volleyball color commentator, raved about how big, enthusiastic crowds had been drawn to the sport since it was added to the Olympics in 1996. But, he noted, there would be one big difference in Beijing: The sport was going to be a centerpiece of NBC’s coverage. Kerri and I were to be featured as one of the network’s top five story lines of the Games, along with swimmer Michael Phelps, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, the U.S. men’s basketball team, and the U.S. track and field athletes. All of our matches were scheduled to be televised in prime time.

  “I don’t think it has anything to do with bikinis or not bikinis,” Karch told the Associated Press. “The sport has a sex appeal that track and field and some others don’t. But this is not tennis and it’s not golf. You can make noise any time you want.”

  I, too, believed our sport was about more than sex appeal.

  “People used to think, ‘You guys are just a bunch of girls in bathing suits, running around,’” I told the Associated Press. “But when people come to an event, they see the athleticism. Then they get caught up in everything. The venue will be hopping.”

  While I’m on the subject, let me say a quick word about my “uniform.” I grew up on the beach, so wearing a bikini is normal for me. When I watch “old school” videos from the 1960s, some of the girls Dad played with were wearing string bikinis. He says they’d dive around the court, and their tops would come flying off. I’ve only had one incident, back in high school. I went up to hit a ball, and my top snapped. No wardrobe malfunctions since then, though. Kerri hasn’t been as lucky: Her top broke in the middle of a game.

  Look, bikinis are functional for what we do. You’d get too hot and too full of sand if you played in shorts and tank tops. Quite honestly, when most girls first start playing beach volleyball, they feel very pale and very exposed. I’m so used to it now I don’t even think twice about it. I cherish my bikinis. I’ve saved every single one. I’m even superstitious about them. You know how Tiger Woods always wears a red shirt to play his final rounds in tournaments? Well, Kerri and I always wear black bikinis in the finals. That’s our power color. The only time I’m overly modest on the beach is during warm-ups, when I’ll cover up because that’s when random people snap my picture. If I’m stretching, especially if my legs are split apart, I feel very vulnerable. And the only time any of us girls are overly sensitive about wearing our bikinis is when we’re feeling heavy or bloated. Bikinis tell all, especially when you’re the slightest bit out of shape.

  When it came to the 2008 Olympics, though, I was just happy to have any bathing suit to play in. We’d arrived in China bikiniless. Speedo was supposed to have provided our suits, and somebody, somewhere had dropped the ball. The scenario was almost comical: You’re on the biggest stage in the world, and you could potentially be performing naked. Fortunately, Nike stepped in, and we finally got our suits the day before the FIVB technical meeting. But there only were two of them—we usually have at least three—and they fit terribly. If we bent over, our chests showed. Kerri and I made some changes, and a Chinese seamstress did the alterations. Eventually, we had three suits—red, white, and blue. If we hadn’t had suits to show the FIVB technical committee, which checks such things as the size of sponsor emblems and the placement of numbers, we might’ve been sanctioned and not allowed to play.

  When we opened pool play on August 10, we were the number one team in the world, but the number two seed in the tournament. That’s because, in the Olympics, there’s a “homer rule.” China’s Tian and Wang were the number one seed since they hailed from the host country. The media was calling us the “prohibitive favorites.” We were taking a record winning streak of eighteen consecutive tournaments into Beijing—we’d won 101 straight matches—and Kerri, with a gold medal victory, would join me as the only two women in the sport’s history with a hundred career victories. Only five others in beach volleyball had won a hundred or more matches, and all of them were men.

  Of course, I planned to drink it all in. Marching in the Opening Ceremony with Kerri. Attending other Olympic events, especially men’s and women’s table tennis, which China had dominated since the 1960s. Sightseeing with Misty’s Misfits. Learning a little Chinese. (I wasn’t going to eat Chinese food, though, because I didn’t want to chance getting sick.) This Olympics would be very different from Athens, where my only tourist highlight was a quick peek at the Acropolis. This Olympics, I told myself, might very well be my last, so I’d better do it right.

  In our first match, we defeated Japan’s Mika Teru Saiki and Chiaki Kusuhara, 21–12, 21–15, in thirty-six minutes. It was the first time we’d seen center court. We treated it as a warm-up, something to get our rhythm going. We’d never played the Japanese team before—at five feet eight and five feet nine, they were the second-shortest team in the tournament—so, when we won, we were like, “Okay, that was good . . .” We got a break from the heat blanketing Beijing—it was eighty-two degrees at game time with 87 percent humidity—and light showers fell throughout the match. But the rain didn’t slow us down, and it certainly didn’t dampen our enthusiasm.

  The Japanese women had come out strong in the second game, running up a 7–4 lead, until we scored six of the next seven points to take control of the game and match. I had ten match digs; Kerri was excellent at the net, with three intimidating blocks. She played with black “kinesio” tape on her surgically repaired right shoulder to help increase circulation and lymph node drainage, and to help keep her joint in line. Our favorite physiotherapist, Pericles, who’d treated us in Athens through the FIVB, but whom we’d paid to join us in Beijing, had turned her on to the tape. She said its impact was like taking some Advil. With or without the tape, Kerri looked sharp. I think her shoulder surgery actually had improved her finesse game.

  With our victory over the Japanese, we were off and running. Well, except for one hiccup. When Kerri went up for a block against the Japanese, her gold wedding ring flew off. She actually handled the incident quite well. She was like, “Uh-oh,” and then she said, “Okay, we’ll just deal with it later.” It was the Olympics, and she wanted to win. Her focus was pretty good, but I could tell between rallies her wedding band was on her mind because she’d look down at the sand, trying to spot it. When it happened, I thought, “Why are you wearing it in the first place?” In just the past year alone, at least three professional men’s players had lost their wedding rings. It’s just the nature of the sport: Your hands get sweaty, and your rings fall off. And that’s why I don’t wear mine.

  After the match, Kerri was so bummed out about losing her wedding band that she phoned her husband, Casey, and asked him to have another made so he could bring it to China when he flew out later in the week. She was extremely sentimental about it: H
e’d given it to her when he’d proposed in 2004 beside a river on Molokai, Hawaii. Inside, he’d engraved “SIX FEET OF SUNSHINE,” her nickname.

  More than seventeen thousand tons of sand had been brought into Chaoyang Park to create the beach volleyball venue, and the venue volunteers regularly raked it throughout the day’s competition, so trying to pinpoint her ring would be comparable to finding a needle in a haystack. With the help of NBC’s broadcast of our match, and the network’s ability to reduce the moment to super-slow motion, volunteers figured out when and where it had flown off. Most important, metal detectors were on the FIVB’s checklist for equipment for international play, since many of the events are on beaches and foreign objects are common.

  Several hours after our match, a volunteer named Song Zhendong dug up the ring. Kerri learned Sunday night that her wedding ring had been recovered, but she didn’t have it back on until the following day. She met with the volunteer Monday, presenting him with some Olympic pins as a thank-you gift. She said she had not taken off the ring since Casey presented it to her years before.

  I understood about superstitions and sentimentality when it came to jewelry. I’d invited Debbie Green, my setting coach at Long Beach State, to come watch me play in Beijing, but she’d declined because she didn’t have a current passport and she couldn’t miss the start of practice for college volleyball season. So unbeknownst to me, she gave a box to our family friend Jim Steele to bring with him to Beijing. Inside the box, she’d put a gold necklace with a symbol of a volleyball player and the five Olympic rings. It had been given to her before the 1984 Olympics by the mother of one of her teammates, Linda Chisholm. Debbie had worn it as she’d helped lead her U.S. indoor teammates to the silver medal. She’d worn it for years, without taking it off, but she hadn’t worn it for the past decade. She’d always thought she’d pass it down to her daughters, Nicole and Dana, but then she felt she wanted me to have it. So she’d talked to her kids, and they’d said, absolutely! It was the only piece of jewelry I wore throughout our competition in Beijing.