Olympic Nostalgia
I always get reflective when I watch the Olympics. I remember where I was the last time there was an Olympics, who I watched it with, what was going on in my life at the time. Like a lot of other people, I bet, I also remember my own experiences with the sport as I watch.
It’s always the Summer Olympics that stir up the most memories for me, and this Olympics in particular provided a number of fun flashbacks.
Swimming was a huge part of my childhood, and I was on multiple swim teams at any given time. I was on a dive team for a while as well….although, I guess a more accurate description would be that my swim team wanted a dive team, and a few of us tried it out. But as soon as a friend of mine did a face plant into the board during a backflip (ala Greg Louganis), we were told to stick with swimming.
I was a damn good swimmer, if I may say so, although how I did depended on which team I was swimming for. At summer camp, I pretty much always placed first. At home, I swam for second, no matter what event it was. Relay, solo, I always placed second to someone on my own team. Nice that my team always went one-two, but still… The only time I placed first at home was in butterfly (which is an evil evil stroke that I think I was only forced to swim because I was the only one who could do it), but I was disqualified for having a “left inverted pinky toe.” I didn’t understand what it meant then, and while I kinda think it had something to do with my foot pointing the wrong way, I still don’t get the inverted toe reference now.
I loved swimming, though, and nothing could keep me out of the pool, not even a cast on my broken wrist that wasn’t supposed to get wet. The cast sure did come in handy during camp color war, though! I looooved color war, and it all always came down to the last day, when we had a full day relay race with baton passing and all. I was given the swimming event, of course, which just happened to be the final leg. The baton caused some difficulties for other swimmers, since they couldn’t figure out how to hold it while swimming. Me? I shoved it into my cast! I did ultimately pay for swimming with the cast when I got it off (my arm was a wreck), but I don’t think I would have given up that moment for anything.
I did the AYSO (kiddie league soccer) thing, although I was terrible. I may be the only goalie in history to score a goal for the opposing team by drop kicking the ball straight over my head. Still not sure how I lived that one down…if I ever did. But every time I see a goalie kick a ball away in a soccer game I remember that moment.
Basketball, well, I’m tall, and my dad loves basketball. Wasn’t it a given that he would be my basketball coach when I was a kid? I hit high school, played one year on junior varsity and quit. Wasn’t my thing.
But volleyball? That was my thing. I still wasn’t very good - the only sport I was ever really good at was swimming - but I was decent enough to play. And I’m competitive as hell. My volleyball team had a pretty fun rivalry going with another school, and when we met at tournaments, it was a crazy thing. Spikes to the face, the whole bit.
(here’s where I date myself) I was in high school, playing volleyball, the last time the US men’s team won the gold. My team became obsessed with the Olympic team. Every day, we would charge into practice, all excited to emulate those amazing men. We would be slightly bleary eyed from watching a match live the night before - from Korea - but we were still driven to be like those guys. We even dubbed each team member with a counterpart on the Olympic team. Me, I was Steve Timmons, although I had a crush on Karch Kiraly. The men won the gold, and we beat our rival team. It was a great year.
The men won the gold again this year, and all the games were narrated by none other than Karch Kiraly. It was a blast to watch, and the memories came flooding back. I’d watch someone spike, remember someone else who’d done that. Watch another person set a ball, think back to our setter (who was, without a doubt, the best player on our team. She was awesome.). Watch someone serve a ball out, remember myself doing that. Hey, I said I wasn’t very good.
I loved everything about sports then. Winning, obviously, was best, but even practices could be fun if you were in the right mindset. Those practices during the Olympics are probably my fondest memories of volleyball. Swimming endless laps in a pool gets boring. But pretending you’re an olympian? Now that’s fun.
I may not be Michael Phelps, but I still have a huge box full of ribbons and trophies all my own. And every four years, it’s just fun to look back.
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By Joelogon, August 27, 2008 @ 9:46 am
My favorite part of volleyball in the 1988 Olympics was watching Jeff Stork get ready to make a set, that suddenly turned into a surprise spike.
We ran a charity volleyball marathon that fall — I arranged for a videotape of the gold medal game to loop on a TV in the refreshment area. Good stuff.