Lost opportunity

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, August 10, 2004

She had asked God for a second chance. Begged, pleaded – even promised that things would be different.

Few athletes get to the Olympic Games once in their lives, but Sherron Walker, a diminutive 19-year-old with the potential to be a world champion, was asking to go back for no other reason than guilt.

Given an opportunity to compete with the world’s best long jumpers in 1976, the Everett High School graduate was distraught with her own lack of effort.

“I felt like I didn’t give 100 percent,” Walker said 28 years later. “I prayed and said: ‘Lord, if you give me another chance, I’ll give 100 percent.’”

Walker was on her way to getting that second chance, but Jimmy Carter took it away. The United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Games, leaving Walker’s only Olympic experience a painful one.

Instead of looking back on the Olympics as one of the greatest events of her life, Walker can only look back with regret.

“Had I fulfilled my dream at that time,” Walker said, “I probably would have walked away. But that kept me going – that desire and burn to go back and give 100 percent.”

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The first time Merrilie Howard saw Sherron Walker jump, she knew she had no future in the sport. The raw talent was there, but Walker stood just 5-foot-3, and weighed – in Howard’s words – “100 pounds, soaking wet.” Howard, the Everett High School track coach, immediately commanded her away from the high jump pit and to another part of the track.

Walker wandered over to another area at Everett Memorial Stadium, and an Olympian was born. The long jump pit, it turned out, was where Walker was destined to soar.

“You won’t go to the 1972 Olympics,” Howard recalls telling the freshman jumper in the spring of ‘72, “but you will go in 1976.”

That came as no surprise to Walker, who remembered watching the 1960 Olympics as a 3-year-old and promised herself she would one day compete in them.

By the end of her freshman year, Walker had won a state title in the long jump with a mark of 17 feet, 11 inches. Over the next three years, she added three more titles. She still holds the state record of 21 feet, 3 inches. Quite simply, Walker’s legacy remains as one of the greatest long jumpers in state history.

“In practice, she jumped 23 feet several times, without a scratch” Howard said, mentioning a mark that would have challenged the world record in 1975. “But sometimes it gets hairy in competition; there’s a lot more pressure.”

Walker’s grades prevented her from getting a scholarship at a big-time program, but she quickly made an impression at the University of Puget Sound. By the end of her freshman year there, at the age of 19, Walker and North Carolina teenager Kathy McMillan were considered the United States’ top two long jumpers.

Walker opened the Olympic trials with an impressive jump of 21-8, then cleared 23 feet twice but barely scratched both times. Her first jump was enough to qualify Walker as the No. 2 American at the 1976 Games, behind only McMillan.

But something happened to Walker in the days leading up to the Olympic track and field meet at Montreal, and she blames it on immaturity. She didn’t get along with some of the U.S. coaches, a relationship that reached its boiling point when she came back from a party a few minutes late. She was also flustered during the event, when television coverage forced athletes to take more time than they were accustomed between attempts.

“I treated it seriously until I felt like I was battling all the coaches and officials,” she said. “Then I just felt tired and wanted to get it over with and go home.”

Walker’s performance was so unremarkable that she doesn’t even recall her marks – only that her only jump that counted was somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-10 or 21 feet.

She enjoyed the Olympic experience over the final few days, meeting a number of athletes from other countries, but returned to the U.S. with a bitter taste in her mouth.

That’s when Walker promised to be back.

“I know I didn’t give 100 percent, and I’m sorry,” Walker said. “God gave me the talent, I didn’t develop it and make the best of it, and that bothered me.

“I don’t blame anyone else. Had I not been so young, I may have handled it differently.”

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By 1980, Sherron Walker was in the prime of her career. She was competing in national and international meets and regularly jumping in the neighborhood of 21 1/2 feet. Perhaps more important, she had matured. Walker had the kind of mindset required to become a world-class athlete.

But something out of Walker’s control – American politics – was the only obstacle she could not out-leap. A boycott meant that the U.S. team would not take part in the Moscow Games.

“At that time, it was out of my hands,” Walker said. “The (performance in 1976) was in my hands, and that bothered me. That’s the difference. Things I can’t control, I don’t worry about. So I’m not bitter (about the boycott).”

The human body can only last so long, and a woman’s goals change with time. So by the time the 1984 Olympics were on the radar, Walker was no longer interested. She had gotten married, to a man named Sean Boyea, and was ready to start having children.

She hadn’t gotten a chance to make up for the debacle of ‘76, yet Walker knew it was time to move on.

“I used to always think: What will I do when it’s time to quit?” she said recently. “Well, when it was time, I knew in my heart it was time.”

Her first child, Brandon, was born in 1985. Sherron Walker knew then that her career as a long jumper was over, but she hadn’t completely closed the door on competing again.

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Like any 48-year-old mother, Sherron Boyea has a lot on her plate these days. With four children, including two teen-age boys who are training to become boxers, Boyea barely has time to think.

But Boyea, who lives in Elk Grove, Calif., found an outlet that helps her unwind and rewind at the same time.

She doesn’t remember how or why she discovered racquetball, but Boyea fell in love with it pretty quickly. And she was good at it, too. As recently as 2002, Boyea was ranked 15th in the nation for players over 40 years old. She went to the championship of the National Singles 35-and-over Championship last May and is currently ranked 23rd in the 45-and-older category.

Being a professional racquetball player is pretty natural for Boyea, whose athleticism once carried her to the Olympic Games.

But she says her biggest strength is experience. Under no circumstances, Boyea vows, will she ever walk away from a match with regrets.

“I learned that regardless, you never let go of your dream,” Walker Boyea said. “You always give 100 percent.”

Because you rarely get a second chance.