Olympics end, healing continues for U.S. men's volleyball coach whose father-in-law was killed
Volleyball gold is bittersweet for coach whose father-in-law was murdered in Beijing
BEIJING -- It hit Hugh McCutcheon all at once. All of it, together for the first time after he had compartmentalized so brilliantly before.
His father-in-law was stabbed to death while sightseeing in Beijing, his mother-in-law hurt, and his wife there to see it all. He also had this little Olympic volleyball tournament to think about, the thing that had been his focus, as the U.S. men's coach, for four years. Players were counting on him. So he came back, separating tragedy from sport. And then the U.S. team, which wasn't even supposed to win a medal, won the gold Sunday, 3 sets to 1, shocking world power Brazil despite everything.
(AP)
And there was McCutcheon, hugging his coaches as all winning coaches do.
And suddenly, he froze. McCutcheon put his hands on the side of his face, his fingers on the top of his head, and simply started crying. All of it hit. He walked off the court and into a tunnel, sobbing, where no one would see him.
"The only word right now is `surreal,' " he said. "It's all a bit fresh to assign any meaning to it.
"I'm not really sure. It was just a little too much. I had to step out. My filter kind of came down."
The picture of McCutcheon makes anyone's scrapbook of most touching Beijing Olympics snapshots. And the truth is, as he finally admitted, "you can't separate the experiences.
"Obviously, it's the best of times and the worst of times," he said. "After a little time, I'll delve into both emotions."
Still on the court afterward, McCutcheon called his wife, `Wiz' Bachman McCutcheon, a former women's Olympic volleyball player, who had gone back to the U.S.
This was a moment that could have torn the team apart. Instead, it seemed to galvanize. The U.S. nearly lost its first match, but then ended up going undefeated.
Wiz wrote an email to the players shortly after the tragedy to tell them to stay focused on what they had come for, and that she was pulling for them. And some of the players said Sunday that that had taken off some pressure, to know that she expected life to go on.
"It hasn't been easy, not that it was ever going to be easy," McCutcheon said. "But when you throw in the emotional load that the team has had to bear collectively, for them to go through and be this good is a wonderful achievement."
Lost in this is what an incredible job McCutcheon has done the past four years of bringing back U.S. volleyball. The U.S. team was struggling to stay among the top 10 in the world when he arrived, after spending most of the 1980s as a world force.
So what happened? McCutcheon said this team had to purge itself of the 1980s, to free these players from the shadow of the past, form their own identity and learn to believe in themselves.
"Obviously, this match is a culmination of the vision and dream Hugh gave us four years ago," said team captain Tom Hoff, who's from Park Ridge. "He told us we need to believe it before it will happen. It's a great reflection of his vision that we came out here and did what he said four years ago."
Brazil's captain, Gilberto Godoy Filho, was asked for his feelings about the match. But, with McCutcheon sitting next to him, he said he wanted to talk about life first, that it's far more important than volleyball.
"I'm really sorry about what happened to you," he told McCutcheon.
A few minutes later, McCutcheon would hug him.
So USA volleyball moves forward from here, the Olympic champions. And McCutcheon? He goes back home to help his wife deal with the death of her father, Todd Bachman, and the recovery of her mother, Barbara.
"I'm not bitter, a (crime) with no motive," he said, as the killer is said to have acted alone, and out of faulty wiring. After killing Bachman, he jumped to his death. "If I spent time angry, that's not going to help me heal, or support my wife and family. We need to get home and get on with that now.
"My work here is done."