Years ago, Courtney Thompson attended a talk given by Misty May, then an outstanding volleyball player at Long Beach State University and a future three-time Olympic gold medalist.
May’s speech that day was about making sacrifices to reach the highest goals in sports. Thompson, at the time a high school player, listened intently, “and then I literally wrote it in my journal that night,” she said. “It was really motivating for me.”
Today a member of the United States women’s national team herself, Thompson is eager to share similar lessons with the next generation of young athletes, and she will do so Friday night during a benefit event at the Academy Sports Center in Lynnwood. The session is sponsored by the Give It Back foundation, which Thompson co-founded.
Joining Thompson will be nine other players from the U.S. national program, including former UW standouts Tama Miyashiro and Krista Vansant. The others are Christa Harmotto, Jordan Larson-Burbach, Foluke Akinradewo, Kristin Hildebrand, Nicole Davis, Kim Hill and Nicole Fawcett.
Friday’s message, Thompson said, will include a “challenge to these athletes to be leaders in their communities and on their teams, and to do things not just because everyone else is doing it, but to do things for the right reasons.”
There will also be discussion of the mental side of sports, which means “training the brain like it’s a muscle,” she said.
Moreover, Thompson said, there will be encouragement for the attendees “to be very best they can be and to not be comparing themselves to any other kid. We just want them to be better today than they were yesterday.”
Thompson, a 2003 graduate of Kentlake High School, played four seasons at Washington and helped the Huskies to the 2005 NCAA championship. In recent years she was on the U.S. team that won the 2012 Olympic Games silver medal in London and the gold medal at the 2014 World Championships in Milan, Italy.
But for all her successes, and perhaps because of them, Thompson was compelled “to put on an event where we could give back to the community that allowed us to have these experiences … (and to) pass along the experiences that we were fortunate enough to learn.” The Give It Back foundation will be hosting similar events in the hometowns of the other national team athletes, and always for the benefit of a local charity.
Dave Weitl, the Academy Sports Center manager, said it will be a unique opportunity for young athletes to spend time with national team members. Generally the team is only together for training camps or tournaments, “so for them to be squeezing in a fundraising trip to Seattle (during the summer season) is unheard of,” he said.
Some members of the national team, including Thompson and Miyashiro, will be coming from Omaha, Neb., where the United States won the gold medal at the World Grand Prix Group 1 Finals. Others, like Vansant, will be coming from Toronto, site of the Pan American Games, where another U.S. team also won a gold medal.
Friday’s event is for athletes ages 8-18, boys and girls, and not just volleyball players, though volleyball will certainly be a focal point, Weitl said. He said he expects to begin the evening with “a fireworks display” as the national team members give a brief demonstration of their skills.
Then they will talk about “the mental skills and mindset that allow you to achieve your goals,” he said. “And for the kids that come, to be able to get close to these athletes and have those conversations, it’s just unprecedented. It’ll be pretty cool for these young ones to get that kind of knowledge imparted to them.”
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