CHANGE MY LOCATION
Sports
Examiners
Sports Examiner
Most Recent Post
Radio hosts get blast back from Magic Johnson after accusations of faking AIDS
California News
Multimedia News
Smith, U.S. field hockey team making up for some lost time
SEE HOW THIS STORY DEVELOPED
Related Topics: BALTIMORE
BALTIMORE (Map, News) - It took four years longer than Keli Smith expected, but she’s finally an Olympian.
Smith and her U.S. field hockey teammates will compete in the Beijing Games after finishing one victory shy of a qualifying for the 2004 Olympics — a heartbreaking setback to Korea that made Smith ponder quitting the sport.
“It’s amazing after 70 minutes of playing how your life can change one way or another,” Smith said. “It was disappointing.”
Four years later, Smith, a former University of Maryland standout, and her teammates made up for lost time by winning all five of their games at their qualifying tournament to earn a spot in the 12-team field next month. It will be the team’s first Olympic appearance since 1996.
“It was an overwhelming sense of joy,” Smith said of the day her team clinched its Olympic berth with a win against Belgium in Kazan, Russia. “You’re almost frozen in time. It was surreal.”
But Smith, at 5-foot-4 and 140 pounds, will not be the team’s only player with local ties. Former Terrapins Dina Rizzo, a forward, and Lauren Powley, a midfielder, also will make their Olympic debuts.
After coming up just shy of qualifying for the Olympics in 2004, Smith decided after competing in the Pan-American Cup later that year she would rather get a “real job” than continue her field hockey career. So the forward traded her stick for a desktop computer, taking a position at Automatic Data Processing in Rockville, where she worked for nearly two years.
But she couldn’t stay away from field hockey. She made trips to the team’s Virginia Beach training facility to play whenever she could. In 2006, Smith rejoined the team full-time, sensing the squad was destined for China. At the qualifying tournament, the Americans outscored their opponents, 24-3.
“For whatever reason this time around we knew we were going to qualify,” Smith, who has played in 112 games with the national team since joining in 2001, said. “There was never any sense of doubt.”
The team heads to Beijing expecting to medal for the first time since winning bronze in 1984. During training camp in Chula Vista, Calif., the players practiced in a special heat chamber to simulate the conditions they will face in Beijing, which is known for its polluted air.
After going through some tough times, confidence is easy for the Americans, according to Rizzo, who roomed with Smith for two years at Maryland before joining the national team in 2002.
“You’ve got to have high expectations,” Rizzo said. “It’s exciting to be in this position and better than being home.”
eric.detweiler@baltimoreexaminer.com
