Fri, Aug. 13, 2004 

Misty May Makes It to Athens Games

CHRIS DUNCAN
Associated Press


ATHENS, Greece - Misty May never doubted she'd get healthy in time to join beach volleyball partner Kerri Walsh at the Olympics. She got sick of reading in newspapers that her strained abdominal muscle was going to keep her home and split the world's No. 1-ranked duo.

"Some comments that were being made got back to me and really infuriated me," May said Thursday. "You know your body. Other people don't."

Two weeks ago, the exaggerated reports about May's health reached Walsh in Austria, where she was playing in a tournament with Rachel Wacholder. Walsh sent a nervous e-mail to May in California, but May's one-paragraph response put Walsh's mind at ease.

"It was so helpful. It left nothing unanswered," Walsh said. "She said, 'Kerri, don't worry. I will be there. We're going to win this gold medal.'"

The duo plays its first match on Sunday - Walsh's 26th birthday - against Japan's Ryoko Tokuno and Chiaki Kusuhara.

It will be only May's fourth match since mid-June, but she says her skills are still sharp. In between daily physical therapy sessions this summer, she practiced volleyball with her father, Butch, a member of the 1968 U.S. Olympic indoor team.

May and Walsh have been training together for only the past week and a half, but Walsh said their on-court chemistry has returned.

"We haven't lost a step," said the 6-foot-3 Walsh. "We know each other very well."

The two became teammates after the 2000 Olympics, but have known each other since elementary school.

Both grew up around the game on the beaches of California. They went to different high schools - Walsh to Archbishop Mitty, May to Newport Harbor. There, May was one of the best prep players in the state, so well-known that Walsh asked her to sign her autograph on a towel.

"She made the whole game look easy," Walsh remembers.

The two crossed paths occasionally in college, when May went to Long Beach State and Walsh went to Stanford. Both won national championships.

Their parents met at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, where May finished fifth on the sand with Holly McPeak and Walsh was playing on the 2000 indoor team that placed fourth.

Both were soured by their experiences. Their parents suggested they become partners and they met to discuss it through their mutual agent, Tom McCarthy.

They were teammates the following spring and won their second event together. They earned four top-5 finishes and more than $111,000 in 2001.

"Relatively speaking, it was a pretty unbelievable first year," Walsh said.

Once Walsh completed the adjustment to the beach game - what she called getting her "sand legs" - the duo got better in a hurry, going 66-8 in 2002. They won four times in early 2003 before losing to Brazilians Ana Paula Connelly and Sandra Pires in Norway.

And then the streak began. May and Walsh won an unprecedented 90 consecutive matches and 15 straight tournaments, a run that ended in early June after May pulled her abdominal muscle.

Walsh said the duo has done its best to put the loss, the injury and the recent adversity out of mind to focus on the task ahead.

"I can't even tell you what I'm thinking," Walsh said. "I can't stop thinking about this. I want the gold medal so badly."