Jim Boeheim and Carmelo Anthony helped restore the legacy of USA Basketball in the 2008 Beijing Games.

Coming off a disappointing bronze medal performance at the Olympics in Athens in 2004 – the United States national team’s first finish without a gold medal in 16 years – the team breezed through five games in pool play with a 32.2-point average margin of victory and beat Australia and Argentina handily to advance to the finals.

Anthony finished with 13 points as the Americans reasserted their international dominance by taking down a Pau Gasol-led Spain squad 118-107 in the gold medal game.

‘It was an unbelievable thrill to represent your country and to win the gold medal,’ Boeheim said. ‘… All the players were great, but it’s a special thing to be with (Anthony) again. Being there this summer as well, I’m sure it’ll be fun to get back and work with him again.’

This summer, Boeheim returns as the top assistant to head coach Mike Krzyzewski and Anthony is expected to be a key cog in the team, though the official roster will not be announced until June 18, at the latest. Fellow superstars LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade are also expected to come back as the Americans look to repeat in London.

The United States has won 13 of 17 gold medals since men’s basketball was introduced to the Summer Olympics in 1936. And for Boeheim, the opportunity to represent his country and win another gold medal is his highest motivation to coach the team.

‘It’s very competitive now,’ Boeheim said of the sport’s global parity. ‘It’s not easy like it used to be. It was a great thrill to be able to (win gold) and to be able to go back this year. It’s a great feeling.’

Boeheim started working with USA Basketball in 1982. Since then, he has coached junior national teams and served as an assistant for the 1990 World Championships and Goodwill Games teams.

But the chance to work with the nation’s most talented basketball players and Krzyzewski, as well as fellow assistants Mike D’Antoni and Nate McMillan has been even more special, Boeheim said.
It’s made him a better coach, too. Since Boeheim’s return from Beijing, the Orange has recorded a 91-16 record – its most successful three-year span in program history.

‘I think it’s been an unbelievable experience in terms of helping our program, as well as the opportunity to work and represent your country,’ Boeheim said.

And come London, Boeheim has only one goal. The coach wants to recapture the feeling of Olympic triumph he experienced after winning gold four years ago.

‘It came down really to the last couple plays of the game, and really, the game could have gone either way,’ Boeheim said. ‘We made some plays and won the game, and it was a great feeling to be in a battle like that and still to win. It was a great feeling.’

Finding the stroke

Mike Gennaro describes it as the most miserable experience of his life.

He lives in an unfurnished house on the San Francisco Bay. He shares that house – and its lone bathroom – with nine other rowers.

But waking up on his air mattress each morning, the Olympic hopeful reminds himself why he chose this life.

‘This is single-handedly the worst thing I’ve ever been a part of,’ Gennaro said, ‘but I’m positive that I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.’

Gennaro is one of 19 oarsmen still competing for a spot on the United States men’s eight team, which will compete in the Olympics in London this summer. For him, that process includes two-a-day rowing sessions and regular weightlifting workouts at the California-Berkeley facilities. Head coach Mike Teti has yet to announce his final roster.

Gennaro, a 2011 SU graduate, is one of four former Syracuse rowers competing for seats on a boat in London. Martin Etem (quadruple scull) and Justin Stangel (pair) look to don the red, white and blue as well, while Natalie Mastracci (eight) hopes to represent her native Canada.

‘I haven’t put much thought into serving for my country,’ Gennaro said, ‘but I think that’s the next-best option. From my experiences rowing on the national team, I’ve never experienced a better feeling in my life than putting on a uniform that has the flag of the United States on it.’

Wearing the American colors, Gennaro has racked up five gold medals in international competition as a member of the Under-23 team during the last three years. He earned a gold medal with the men’s eight in the U23 Championships in Amsterdam this past July. Gennaro won another goal medal in the eight and one in the pair at the Pan American Games in Mexico in October.

The passion that propelled Gennaro to that success was apparent on his first day at SU, said men’s rowing head coach Dave Reischman. Gennaro constantly pushed his fellow freshmen to challenge the varsity squad in races each practice, and more often than not, they won.

‘That’s quite unsettling if you’re a varsity oarsman, to look across and see this group of freshmen that are gunning for you every time you do pieces with them,’ Reischman said. ‘… Those guys would kill themselves to stay up and actually took pieces from the varsity.’

But the Olympics are the highest level of international competition. Only the best of the best make the cut, and Gennaro recognizes that.

It’s what gets him up from his air mattress every morning. And it’s what makes all the misery worthwhile.

‘It’s awful,’ Gennaro said, ‘but you just keep looking ahead at the big picture and you just keep telling yourself that you’re willing to give up anything to get to London.

‘And not only just to get to London, but to win in London. That’s the end goal.’

Taylor made

Shannon Taylor was at the forefront of USA Field Hockey’s greatest feat in its history.

Tallying a crucial goal in the 15th minute of the Pan American Games championship match last October, Taylor gave the Americans an early 2-0 lead over Argentina, then the No. 1 team in the world.

The eventual 4-2 victory gave the United States its first-ever win over Argentina and first-ever gold medal in any international competition.

Now the 2008 Syracuse graduate hopes for an opportunity to elevate the U.S. team to even greater heights.

‘Competing in the Olympics would honestly be a dream come true,’ Taylor said in an email. ‘It is a goal I set for myself quite some time ago, and to accomplish it would be incredible.’

With any luck, that dream will become a reality. Taylor is one of 23 current members of the U.S. women’s national team. Sixteen players and two alternates will make the final roster for London, which will be announced on June 23. Having played more than 50 games for the national team during her career, the 25-year-old striker is experienced at the international level.

‘Representing the United States is truly an honor,’ Taylor said. ‘Every time I put on a USA jersey, it gives me chills. Every international match that starts out with our national anthem is such a humbling feeling.’

With the gold medal in the Pan Am Games, the United States received an automatic spot in the Olympics.

The team has trained in San Diego while other countries have competed in qualifying tournaments. The Americans’ intense regimen includes four two-a-day workouts per week and a series of six-hour training sessions with Navy SEALs to mentally prepare for the Games. Friendly matches against New Zealand, Great Britain and Spain in San Diego, along with a Four Nations Tournament in which the United States played New Zealand, Australia and India, completed the training.

And for Taylor, that tour has rounded out her game.

SU head coach Ange Bradley said Taylor found a niche as a corner specialist and has been crushing the ball off the sets.

‘She’s such a winner,’ Bradley said. ‘She truly knows what it means to have the ‘I’ in win, and she also can surrender herself for the team, and that’s what makes her a champion in my eyes.’

But she still has just under two months until she learns whether she made head coach Lee Bodimeade’s Olympic roster.

Until then, Taylor and her teammates can only keep training.

‘I try to think about the things I can control, and that is only the way I play,’ Taylor said. ‘Everything else, you have to let take care of itself.

‘In the end, I hope I am one of the 16 athletes chosen to represent our country in the Games.’

On track

Flings Owusu-Agyapong couldn’t hold back the smile.

Hands on her hips, she stood proudly by the track in Manley Field House. Chest out, sweat dripping from her brow, Owusu-Agyapong had just finished her sprints workout for the day.

But when asked about her chances to qualify for the Summer Olympics, the Syracuse graduate student broke her stern stance and the corners of her lips perked up.

‘Right now, I guess I’m the second-fastest in the country,’ Owusu-Agyapong said. ‘We have the national championship after NCAAs, so we’ll get a better picture, but it’s looking pretty good.’

For Owusu-Agyapong, a chance to represent her native Ghana on the ultimate international stage would be accomplishing a career-long dream. Despite moving to Toronto, Ontario at the age of 8, she said she ‘hasn’t lost touch of her Ghanian side’ and hopes to qualify in both the 100-meter and 4×100 meter relay.

Along with Owusu-Agyapong, fellow graduate student Jarret Eaton – who won the national championship in the 60-meter hurdles this indoor season – and SU alumnus Mike LeBlanc of Canada and Ramon Sosa of the Dominican Republic are also hoping to qualify for London.

‘It’s a great feeling just because you know you’re not training by yourself,’ Owusu-Agyapong said. ‘Even though we’d be competing for different countries, right now we’re like one family, and that’s pretty much how we train, just like one family.’

Eaton notched the second-fastest time in NCAA history at the Penn State National Invitational in January, crossing the line at 7.49 seconds. Competing against the best America has to offer, he faces an uphill battle.

But Eaton said he is focused solely on his own performance. If he keeps winning his races, he’ll be ready when the time comes to go after those heavy hitters in the 110-meter hurdles at the U.S. Olympic Trials June 22.

But LeBlanc, a 100-meter runner, and Sosa, a 110-meter hurdler, can’t take that approach. As post-graduates, the two have to be self-motivated. They are individual athletes, running to represent their countries.

There are no guaranteed meets, and there is no next year.

‘It’s more difficult because essentially you’re running for your life,’ LeBlanc said. ‘… But in a way, that’s also good because it’s kind of a distractor. It’s like this is all I have, so the ante is up, so to speak.
‘But I love it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be doing it.’

Running at the World Indoor Championships in Istanbul, Turkey in March, LeBlanc placed 10th in the 60-meter.

LeBlanc said he’s run a 10.18 100-meter Olympic qualifying time before but will need to be ready when he’s presented with the opportune conditions.

All four athletes will have opportunities throughout the outdoor season to officially qualify for the Olympics.

For Owusu-Agyapong, who has represented Ghana in the African Games in 2010 in Kenya and 2011 in Mozambique, a chance to don her nation’s colors in London this summer would be an incomparable experience.

She is already recognized by her community when she returns home each summer, but an Olympic appearance would keep that smile on her face all summer.

‘That’s been my dream for as long as I’ve been running track,’ Owusu-Agyapong said. ‘I can’t really express how that would feel. It would just be the most amazing thing ever.’

Shattered Dreams

One shocking announcement from the International Olympic Committee in July of 2005 shattered the dreams of young girls across the country.

The IOC declared softball would be removed from the Olympics starting in 2012, and one of those young girls was then-16-year-old Jenna Caira, who had long yearned to pitch on the greatest international stage of them all.

‘Oh man, I remember my dad videotaping me at one of my birthdays or something,’ Caira said. ‘I was probably about 5 years old. He was like, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’
‘I said, ‘I want to play in the Olympics.”

But for Caira – Syracuse’s star pitcher and the first hurler to record 1,000 strikeouts in Big East history -and the 1.3 million girls who play youth softball in America per year, those childhood aspirations will likely never come to fruition. The IOC elected to pull softball and baseball from its Summer Olympics lineup, reasoning that there was not enough parity in the sport as the United States and Canada dominated play.

While supporters of the sport are hopeful it will be reinstated in future Games, the removal has set the sport’s global growth back dramatically.

Syracuse head coach Leigh Ross, another staunch supporter of the sport of softball, said the competitive balance in the sport was improving before softball was cut from the Olympics and that Japan’s gold medal in the 2008 Games in Beijing proves that.

‘We had been so successful as a country in that sport,’ Ross said of the United States. ‘I knew it was just a matter of time for the other countries to catch up. … If they had given it a few more years, I think everybody else would’ve started catching up, which they did.

But the decision had already been made.

And for Caira, who was ineligible to compete for Team Canada in the 2008 Games as a junior national team member, losing potentially her only chance to achieve her dream was heartbreaking.

‘As a kid, when you’re playing softball, you realize, ‘Oh, what is your biggest dream?’ and you think, ‘Go to the Olympics,” Caira said. ‘For women, we don’t really say in softball that we want to go play professional softball. It’s always to go to the Olympics and to be able to represent your country and find success.’

The senior pitcher is now on the Canadian senior national team and is one of a handful of current Orange players who would have had a chance to make an Olympic roster. Fellow Canadian Carey-Leigh Thomas, who played on the junior national team last year, as well as Lisaira and Shirley Daniels, who both play on the Puerto Rican national team, could have joined Caira in London, Ross said.

But the Syracuse players do their best to persevere and continue to spread the sport they love. Ross said many will look to play overseas, like second baseman Stephanie Watts, who is headed to Germany this summer.

Although Caira can’t play in the Olympics, she can still train with Canada’s best and compete against elite international competition in the Pan American Games and other tournaments.

‘Just to be able to play with the girls who are former Olympians is allowing me to learn from them still,’ Caira said, ‘and it’s still an honor to be able to represent my country.

‘It’s bittersweet, I think.’

sebail01@syr.edu

Published on April 30, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Stephen: sebail01@syr.edu | @Stephen_Bailey1