Local tie to Beijing has good ending

Jeffrey Hunt might not necessarily have been a fan of volleyball, but he never really had a choice, especially now that his niece is one of the world's best in the sport.

Hunt, who said he's lived in the area for 30 years and in Vallejo for the last 13, follows Logan Tom, perhaps the best player from the silver medal-winning women's indoor team, because Tom is the daughter of Hunt's sister.

According to Hunt, biased it's true, Tom is also a "sweetheart" - driven to win, yet kind to teammates and opponents.

"She's everybody on the team's friend," said Hunt, reached by phone earlier this week.

Even if you didn't have a relative on the court, the United States indoor teams made for compelling television as they won their way into the gold medal games. The men grabbed gold over Brazil, the women took silver, also against Brazil.

The games were fast-paced, and with six players the rallies are longer than the two-player beach version. Like the beach game, there's plenty of congratulations to go around after each and every point, no matter the outcome -

in fact it can be hard to tell who won the point at times.

Those bonds were exposed to limits you wouldn't wish on anyone when the father of former U.S. player Elisabeth Bachman McCutcheon was fatally stabbed on Aug. 9 at a popular Beijing tourist site by a man who then committed suicide; her mother was seriously injured in the attack. Todd Bachman was also the father-in-law of U.S. men's volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon.

The teams continued on, of course, and mostly played above expectations. Losing in four sets in the final, the women's team accomplished something no other squad had done in these Olympics against the mighty Brazilians: they managed to take a set.

"I looked at the medal around my neck and it's such an accomplishment for this team and the USA and these girls," Tom told the Associated Press afterward. "It just brought tears to my eyes, and I'm more than thrilled."

Tom's story is a good one, too.

Born in Napa, she later moved to Salt Lake City and attended high school there. A recent Salt Lake Tribune story on Tom called her the greatest volleyball player in Utah state history. Hunt, her uncle, recalled that she was the most highly-recruited player ever chased by Stanford, where she had a phenomenal collegiate career.

She was the Pac-10 Freshman of the Year, then played on the U.S. national team as a sophomore, in the 2000 Sydney Olympics when the Americans took fourth. As a senior, she won a second straight national player of the year award and became the third player in history to be named a first-team All-American four straight years. As a junior in 2001, the Cardinal won the NCAA championship.

Later, as a club professional, Tom traveled the world playing for top level teams.

But one thing eluded her, an Olympic medal. At Athens in 2004, the U.S. was fifth.

So Beijing was set up as maybe the last opportunity for the 27-year-old Tom, who had left the indoor team for three years pursuing other volleyball avenues (including on the beach). And though they didn't win the gold, every player agreed there was nothing wrong with silver - breaking a U.S. medal drought in women's indoor dating back to the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

U.S. team captain Lindsey Berg gave specific credit to Tom, who didn't dink around the net, but came out swinging, and swinging often, against the Brazilians.

"No disappointment," Tom told the Associated Press, while also not leaving out the possibility of her return in 2012. "There's no disappointment. If we would have come out today and not fought, I might have a different answer, but we fought our hearts out. So I have no kind of regret. I'm happy with this thing around my neck right now and I will be forever."

Even all the way back in Vallejo, it was apparent.

"Obviously they all wanted gold, that's what we were rooting for as well, but they were happy," Hunt said. "I could tell with the looks on their faces that they were very happy to have gotten the silver medal."

Of course, Hunt was more than an interested observer during the Games.

He saw his niece interviewed on CNN shortly after the tragedy, saying she looked pretty broken up. He watched proudly as Tom, her all-around skill on display, would stay in throughout entire rotations, perhaps as good a reason as any why Tom was named "Best Scorer" for these Games. He again felt the familiarity of seeing a family member in action, recalling that Tom's father, Mel Tom, had a stint in the NFL.

Speaking of Brazil, Hunt said his mother, Tom's grandmother, was born and raised in Brazil, where the two main sports are soccer and volleyball. So the family was always used to volleyball, though now they're avid fans.

"I've always enjoyed watching her do well, but the Olympics ... it was kind of a sense of pride," Hunt summed up. "But I'm always rooting for her, and hope she does her best."

You didn't even have to be related to Tom and the American team to hope for that this year.

• The Associated Press contributed to this report.