|
|
Post by number1fan on Aug 19, 2008 23:40:44 GMT -5
Dalhausser, Rogers to play for beach gold
Posted Tuesday, August 19, 2008 5:35 PM ET
The U.S. men's beach volleyball team of Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers are guaranteed a medal at the 2008 Beijing Games.
Dalhausser and Rogers defeated Georgia's Jorge TERCEIRO and Renato GOMES 21-11, 21-13 to advance to Friday's gold-medal match, where the 2007 world champions will face Brazil's Fabio Magalhaes and Marcio Araujo.
The Brazilians defeated their compatriots -- and the 2004 Olympic champions -- Emanuel Rego and Ricardo Santos 22-20, 21-18 in Wednesday's second semifinal.
Terceiro and Gomes, who were born in Brazil and later became Georgia citizens, trailed the Americans early. The U.S. duo got off to a quick 10-2 start before clinching the first set 21-11.
Dalhausser and Rogers controlled the second set from the start, taking a 6-2 advantage. They extended their lead to 10 before closing out the set 21-13.
The 6-foot-9 Dalhausser, nicknamed the "Thin Beast," recorded seven blocks in the match.
On Tuesday, the American women's team of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh defeated Brazil's Talita Antunes and Renata Ribeiro to advance to the women's final. The U.S. duo will play China's Tian Jia and Wang Jie on Thursday in an attempt to win their second straight Olympic gold medal.
also in the medal round...the us men's b-ball team will play australia this morning.
|
|
|
|
Post by tabatha on Aug 19, 2008 23:49:41 GMT -5
All right. I like Dalhausser. Go USA Volleyball. Thanks for the articles everyone  Ooh...men's basketball...I'm excited! |
|
|
|
Post by tdav on Aug 21, 2008 1:48:26 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by number1fan on Aug 21, 2008 2:26:30 GMT -5
Parenting
Phelps’s Mother Recalls Helping Her Son Find Gold-Medal Focus
By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: August 8, 2008
DEBORAH PHELPS’S third baby and only son was larger than life from Day 1 — 9 pounds, 6 ounces and 23 inches long. As a little boy, said the mother, he asked 25 zillion questions, always wanting to be the center of attention. If he wasn’t zooming by on his big-wheel tricycle, he was swinging past on the monkey bars.
Starting with preschool, teachers complained: Michael couldn’t stay quiet at quiet time, Michael wouldn’t sit at circle time, Michael didn’t keep his hands to himself, Michael was giggling and laughing and nudging kids for attention.
As he entered public school, he displayed what his teachers called “immature” behavior. “In kindergarten I was told by his teacher, ‘Michael can’t sit still, Michael can’t be quiet, Michael can’t focus,’ ” recalled Ms. Phelps, who was herself a teacher for 22 years. The family had recently moved, and she felt Michael might be frustrated because the kindergarten curriculum he was getting in the new district was similar to the pre-K curriculum in their old district.
“I said, maybe he’s bored,” Ms. Phelps recalled saying to his teacher. “Her comment to me — ‘Oh, he’s not gifted.’ I told her I didn’t say that, and she didn’t like that much. I was a teacher myself so I didn’t challenge her, I just said, ‘What are you going to do to help him?’ ”
In the elementary grades at their suburban Baltimore school, Ms. Phelps said, Michael excelled in things he loved — gym and hands-on lessons, like science experiments. “He read on time, but didn’t like to read,” she said. “So I gave him the Baltimore Sun sports pages, even if he just read the pictures and captions.”
She will never forget one teacher’s comment: “This woman says to me, ‘Your son will never be able to focus on anything.’ ”
His grades were B’s and C’s and a few D’s.
It was a tough period. Ms. Phelps and her husband, a state trooper, were divorcing. She had just gone back to school to get a master’s degree to become an administrator, she said, and at the same time she had to be the 24/7 parent.
Michael grew like crazy, but not evenly — his ears looked huge, and when he ran, his arms swung below his knees. (He was on his way to being 6 feet 4 inches tall with an arm span of 6 feet 7 inches.) Kids bullied him, and when he whacked one on the school bus, he was suspended from the bus for several days.
When he was in fifth grade, during his annual check-up, Ms. Phelps and the family physician, Dr. Charles Wax, discussed whether Michael might have A.D.H.D. — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. By then, the Phelpses were a swimming family. (Michael’s older sister Whitney at 15 was ranked first in the country in the 200-meter butterfly, though her career would be cut short by a back injury.) Dr. Wax’s children also swam, and he’d noticed Michael at the Phelps sisters’ swim meets. “Michael used to run around like a little crazy person mooching food off people,” said Ms. Phelps.
The doctor suggested sending assessment forms to his teachers. Their consensus: Can’t sit still, can’t keep quiet, can’t focus.
At age 9, Michael was put on Ritalin, a stimulant used to treat hyperactivity.
His mother thinks it helped a little. “He seemed to be able to focus longer,” she said. “He could get through homework without moving around so much.” She said he was still a middling student. “It might have raised some C’s to B’s,” she said. But if a homework assignment had to be at least four sentences, she said, “he’d just do four sentences.”
After two years, Michael asked to get off the meds. He had to go to the school nurse’s office to take a pill at lunch, she said, and felt stigmatized. “Out of the blue, he said to me: ‘I don’t want to do this anymore, Mom. My buddies don’t do it. I can do this on my own.’ ”
“I was always stern as a parent,” she said, “but from Day 1, I included my children as part of the decision process. So I listened.” After consulting with Dr. Wax, Michael stopped medication.
In the meantime, Michael the swimmer had appeared. By 10, he was ranked nationally in his age group. Ms. Phelps watched the boy who couldn’t sit still at school sit for four hours at a meet waiting to swim his five minutes’ worth of races.
When Michael was 11, his swim coach at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club, Bob Bowman — still his coach — took the Phelpses aside and talked about Michael’s gift. “Bob says, ‘By 2000, I look for him to be in the Olympic trials,’ ” recalled Ms. Phelps. “ ‘By 2004, he makes the Olympics. By 2008, he’ll set world records. By 2012, the Olympics will be in New York and’ — I said ‘Bob, stop, he’s 11, he’s in middle school.’ ”
As it turned out, the boy would move four years faster than his coach’s prediction (and New York would lose its Olympic bid).
At age 12 Michael needed an algebra tutor, and was so antsy in school that his mother suggested the teacher sit him at a table in the back. And yet he willingly got up at 6:30 daily for 90-minute morning practices and swam 2 to 3 hours every afternoon.
By 15, in 2000, he was at the Olympics; at 16 he had his first world record; and by 19, at the 2004 Olympics, he had won 8 medals, 6 of them gold.
Of all his mental gifts, the one that amazes his mother the most is this: “Michael’s mind is like a clock. He can go into the 200 butterfly knowing he needs to do the first 50 in 24.6 to break the record and can put that time in his head and make his body do 24.6 exactly.”
He always did his swimming homework. “In high school, they’d send tapes from his international races,” Ms. Phelps said. “He’d say, ‘Mom I want to have dinner in front of the TV and watch tapes.’ We’d sit and he’d critique his races. He’d study the turns — ‘See, that’s where I lifted my head.’ I couldn’t even see what he was talking about. Over and over. I’m like, ‘whoa.’ ”
These days, Ms. Phelps, 57, is principal of Windsor Mill, a middle school in Baltimore County. Her A.D.H.D. son is so renowned, she was hired this summer by a pharmaceutical firm, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen, as a “celebrity mom” who will answer questions about her experiences with A.D.H.D. on a company-sponsored Web site.
While the company makes an A.D.H.D. medication, Concerta, and arranged my interview with Ms. Phelps, during our three hours together, Ms. Phelps never mentioned the drug. Nor did her son ever take it. Like so many parents, she seemed conflicted about having given her son any medication. “There were so many things going on at the time — the divorce, Michael’s maturity, we changed school districts,” she said. “Were meds the right thing? I could be on the fence either way. That was the decision that was made.”
More to the point, I think, is the moral of her story, which offers hope for parents of any child with a challenge like A.D.H.D.: Too many adults looked at Ms. Phelps’s boy and saw what he couldn’t do. This week, the world will be tuned to the Beijing Olympics to see what he can do.
www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/sports/olympics/10Rparent.html?ref=nyregionspecial2
what a gold medal Mom too
|
|
|
|
Post by lisam on Aug 21, 2008 11:31:14 GMT -5
Apolo is such a sweetie! I think maybe she has a little crush on him. She is such a cute little girl! I was so happy for her winning the gold! |
|
|
|
Post by A.O.Freak on Aug 21, 2008 11:54:21 GMT -5
Apolo is such a sweetie! I think maybe she has a little crush on him. She is such a cute little girl! I was so happy for her winning the gold! aww she so cute  |
|
|
|
Post by tabatha on Aug 21, 2008 22:06:05 GMT -5
 The US men's and women's relay had some tough luck on their side. Jeeze, one team, but both...too bad. Nice to see a sweep in the men's 400. Wariner wasn't happy w/ the out come though. But at least he finished with no injury. (easy for me to say I guess) A diver from Canada won silver. I can't believe how cleanly those Chinese girls went into the water, with hardly a splash. They are so small. I'm looking foward to the men's side. Misty May's ritual after winning gold brought a tear to my eye.  I was so happy for her and Kerri. They seem so sweet. Congrats to the women's soccer team, and too bad USA's softball won silver. They wanted to go out with gold since it won't be in the 2012 games. They did great though... I'm done for now I think...
|
|
|
|
Post by mellie on Aug 21, 2008 23:37:17 GMT -5
At the end of the evening block of Olympic coverage, the commentator said that the IOC and the gymnastics federation was looking into the age issue that was brought up against the Chinese. He said that new legal paperwork had been uncovered that suggested that one of the girls is 14 and not 16. The paperwork says the girl is 14 while her passport says she is 16. If she is 14 then the team gold medal that China won will be stripped from them, and possibly given to the USA women's team.
|
|
|
|
Post by number1fan on Aug 22, 2008 0:25:50 GMT -5
some surprises....us women's v-ball going for the gold.
no surprise....us men's b-ball vs argentina tomorrow in the medal round.
shocking disappointment (for me)...both us men's and women's relay teams drop the baton???  ...wtf?
congrats to misty & kerri...they were magnificient!....and to rogers & dalhausser!
a clean sweep in beach v-ball!!!
|
|
|
|
Post by number1fan on Aug 22, 2008 13:15:04 GMT -5
Team USA is one win away from a gold medal, fighting off Argentina before rolling to a 101-81 victory.
Next up: Spain for the GOLD MEDAL!!!
i feel for manu...his ankle is NOT holding up.  |
|
|
|
Post by mellie on Aug 22, 2008 20:54:03 GMT -5
I feel bad for Manu, but he was warned that this could happen, and it did. The Spurs didn't make a comment, but Coach Pop is probably not to happy.
|
|
kari
Junior Member
*King of the hotties*
Posts: 90 
|
Post by kari on Aug 22, 2008 21:33:08 GMT -5
Is it just me or does Apolos hair look much lighter in this pic??  |
|
kari
Junior Member
*King of the hotties*
Posts: 90
|
Post by kari on Aug 22, 2008 21:33:31 GMT -5
Or is it the lighting??
|
|
|
|
Post by tabatha on Aug 23, 2008 0:29:44 GMT -5
I wasn't happy about the batons either. Both teams...d'oh! Too bad for Manu. That's tough. Go USA. I don't even know what medal USA baseball is playing for, I am out of the loop in that... I heard about them looking into that. I know Asian girls look younger, but come on, we're not that naive. I wasn't too happy about that at all. I hope they get to the bottom of it. I am going to try and catch the replay of what happened earlier on NBC. I fell asleep Shocking for me, I missed the ball game too. Kari, his hair looks red-ish in that pic to me.  |
|
|
|
Post by tabatha on Aug 23, 2008 15:41:03 GMT -5
It's odd how I reply to myself I'm glad that US took home the bronze for the baseball team. It's no silver or gold, but I'm proud of my boys! I was getting worried watching that game, and I was up to see it. I don't know who won the Cuba vs North Korea game. I was too tired by then... What's in the Jamaican water. They can't get any faster. I noticed the puma on their tops. A cheeta would be more fitting, being the fastest land animal and all. (I love big cats) I really enjoyed watching the men's dive. How can they go into the water that cleanly and not splash is amazing. The Chinese are really good at that btw.  Brian Barden-team USA. He's in The Cardinals minor league system. Played for the big club last September. |
|
