The Sound of Silence

I still can't get enough of the Hugh McCutcheon story. People who are actually paid money to write about him have told the story better than me.

Before I move on, I wanted to save this column from the Hartford Courant:



"McCutcheon Separates Deepest Of Emotions"
Jeff Jacobs
August 25, 2008
BEIJING


— He called it compartmentalizing. What it was, of course, was a desperate attempt to separate heartbreak and joy.





Hugh McCutcheon has known these past two weeks that if he allowed two profound emotions to brush too hard against each other, his heart was liable to explode. He has known that if the two collided with too much force, he would be no good to anyone.





So the U.S. volleyball coach separated pain from joy, joy from pain, disconnected, ignored, buried — call it what you will — anything to do his job each day, anything to keep his sanity and serve his team's drive for Olympic glory.





And that's when it all hit him with a thunderclap Sunday inside Capital Gymnasium. Clayton Stanley's spike tailed too sharply on Giba, and the helpless star of the favored Brazilian team could do little more than push the ball out of bounds.

It was over. The Americans won the tense final set, won their first gold medal in two decades, and as his giddy players leaped into the air, McCutcheon turned into the hugs of his trusted assistants. He wanted to thank them for their support through a senseless tragedy that had left his wife's father dead and his wife's mother badly injured. McCutcheon walked toward Bernardo Rezende and shook hands with Brazil's coach.





"The gold medal," Rezende said, "is in good hands."





Yet McCutcheon first needed those hands to clutch his head. You could see his body begin to tremble. He was trying to bury his face with his hands, but he could no longer bury his heart. McCutcheon is not one for great displays of emotion, never was, but he could not stop the tears. He needed a few seconds alone to make sure the great firewall between joy and heartbreak could stand a little longer. He headed for the privacy of a small corridor.





"It has been a very emotionally demanding couple of weeks," McCutcheon said. "That cognition kind of sunk in. The filters came down. I needed to collect myself for a few moments."





A few moments became five minutes. McCutcheon dialed his wife. Elisabeth, known as Wiz, had competed at the 2004 Olympics for the U.S. women's team. Her parents, Todd and Barbara Bachman, loved volleyball. They followed the men's and women's programs everywhere. The Bachmans, captain Tom Hoff said, were always around, bringing the players food and gifts. They were in Beijing one day after the Opening Ceremonies, sightseeing at the Bell Tower, when a knife-wielding madman killed Todd and forced Barbara into eight hours of surgery before jumping to his death. A random act of violence can be no less tragic than a terrorist's act.





"Who knows why this guy did what he did?" McCutcheon said. "He had no motive. If I spent my time being angry, it's not going to help me deal with it, help me support my wife and my family. If we sit around being angry at something that's already happened, I just think it's a waste of a lot of emotion."





We struggle to describe the meaning of sportsmanship and humanity. We take a bunch of high-minded hoo-hah and call it Olympic spirit. Look, there is no way to make sense of senseless violence. Yet a man who reacts to that violence by refusing to allow anger to consume him surely is part of an integral equation of what is good and dignified about mankind.





Wiz, who had returned to Minnesota to help care for her mom, had sent the U.S. team an e-mail before the game. She wanted to let the guys know she was pulling for them. She wanted to let them know her whole family was proud of what they had achieved.





And now she was on the other end of the phone, screaming to her husband, "You won! You won the gold medal!" She was ecstatic. Yet what came next were the most poignant and powerful words of all.





Nothing. Silence. It was the great passion of the unspoken moment.





"We just smiled into the phone," McCutcheon said.





When the smile was finished, the New Zealand-born McCutcheon, 38, returned to the arena. He hugged Lloy Ball first. He pumped a fist in the air. The hugs continued up and down the lineup.





Hoff called the 20-25, 25-22, 25-21, 25-23 gold medal victory a culmination of a vision McCutcheon shared with the team four years ago. Rich Lambourne said McCutcheon poured his heart and soul into this. He is a great coach, Gabe Gardner said, a father figure to all the players. They agreed it was great that McCutcheon, who had missed three games coping with the tragedy, was able to return.





"This is extremely emotional for all of us," Reid Priddy said. "We have invested our lives in this. These are bittersweet times."





A few hours later, on the other side of town, the Closing Ceremonies brought an end to this XXIX Olympiad. China will look at the final score and say, Home team 51 gold medals, USA 36. Opponents of the Chinese government will say the Olympic movement and the world's media did too little to hold this totalitarian nation accountable for its lousy record on human rights. Lovers of sports and accountants on Madison Avenue will be satisfied that Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt and the Redeem Team plied their wares.





What mattered to Hugh McCutcheon was he was going home. As the flame was being extinguished, he already was on a flight back to Minnesota. There he will comfort his wife and her mom. There he will bury Todd Bachman on Friday.





"On one hand I mourn the loss of my father-in-law greatly and my heart aches for my wife and my family," McCutcheon said. "On the other hand I am extremely happy for my team and USA Volleyball. Those are the two emotions. They're conflicted, obviously.





"But I cannot change what has happened. I can only embrace what has occurred and deal with it. This is the best of times and the worst of times."