My Favorite Olympian

I’m not much of an athlete.

I never was one.

Other than a relatively brief period as a cheerleader, I’ve only attempted one athletic pursuit, and that was soccer in eighth grade. I had no intention of trying out for my school team until I found myself in a new, very strange school where literally, anyone who didn’t play sports (cheerleading was considered more of a laughable offense there) was ostracized. So in an attempt to secure a school experience that included actual dialogue, I tried out for soccer, secretly dreading every minute I’d have to play if I made the team.

The coach, also my algebra teacher, came up to me at the end of tryouts and said something about how I’d done such a great job that they really wanted me to be the manager (a euphemism for ball carrier) of the team. While I was clearly not athletic, I was clearly not stupid either, so I declined what really would have been a great opportunity if I’d considered how many hilarious blog posts I would have been able to get out of the whole experience decades later. Too bad I was so short-sighted.

I have not improved with age. Recently, my son and I had a race on the beach at night and he beat me fair and square, despite the fact that I gave it my all.

He beat me twice.

He’s seven.

My lack of ability in this area has done little to spark my interest in watching others play sports either.

But I am patriotic. I am curious by nature. And most of all, I am fascinated by people who put everything on the line, for months or years or even a lifetime, all for a shot at achieving what is almost impossible.

So I love to watch the Olympians compete, to study their faces before, during and after the competitions, to watch their families’ reactions to it all, to listen to their bios between competitions.

I love counting medals, cheering for the underdogs, celebrating with the winners, and studying the performances in certain competitions to try to understand what merits good and not-so-good scores.

I even find it fascinating that there are real human beings out there that are more than two feet taller than me.  How does one manage that exactly?

So I’ve had the Olympics turned on and running in the background of much of my life this week. But after all, it is a life that includes three small people and a man that couldn’t declare a ceasetalk even during his wife’s labor, much less the Olympics. Plus, my mind is swirling with new curriculum ideas, so I’m distracting my own little self much of the time.

But I pick up pieces here and there.

This morning, as I was walking through my house, I caught part of a story about Hannah Starling, the British female diver who finished in 13^th place during the semi-finals, 1 measly place away from making it to the finals. The commentators were discussing her performance, and described how, after one of her dives, she stopped for a minute and looked around, wanting to savor the moment.

She later explained, “I just wanted to take in the feeling of the whole crowd because I thought it might be my last dive at the Olympics.” She added, “I wanted to remember the moment so I turned around and looked at it all. It was brilliant.”

She’s 17.

I really like and am rooting for many of the Olympians. But Hannah Starling, a girl I’d never heard of before this morning, is now my favorite one.

If she has the wisdom and focus and mental fortitude, at age 17, during her first Olympics, amid all that screaming, pounding pressure, to stop, even for a second, just to enjoy the moment, then it is no hyperbole to say that she can do anything she wants.

In the grand scheme of her life, missing the finals became, in that moment of pause, largely irrelevant.