Tough Setup : Shaping a Young Ventura Volleyball Team the Challenge for Ex-Olympian McFadden

Miki McFadden hopped off the exercise bicycle, lay on her back on the floor and lifted her legs straight up against a wall.

“A bodybuilder told me a long time ago that this is good to get the circulation flowing back to the head,” said McFadden, her shirt drenched with perspiration. “I didn’t believe him at first, but it works.”

Now, McFadden must find the way to unravel another mystery, like how to mold a young and inexperienced women’s volleyball team at Ventura College into a competitive unit.

It won’t be an easy assignment for the former setter on the U.S. Olympic team in her first season at Ventura. The Pirates have only two returning players from a team that was 13-8 (13-5 in Western State Conference play) in 1993, and the freshmen need considerable refinement. Still, McFadden says she is up to the task.

“It’s going to be tough but I’m pretty patient,” McFadden said. “I really enjoy seeing (the players) get better.”

Once, when women’s volleyball was taking its first serious steps in the United States, it was McFadden who captured the looks of coaches and peers alike.

She was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, and became an outstanding outside hitter at Punahu High in her hometown. Later, McFadden played at USC, although college volleyball was only a club sport then. But Southern California was already the volleyball mecca in this country and a breeding ground for the national team, and McFadden wanted a shot at playing in the Olympics.

McFadden got her wish and made the American team in 1966 after a U.S. Volleyball Assn. tournament that doubled as a tryout.

“For me, playing in college was fun but it was real low-keyed,” McFadden said. “But the national team was serious.”

In 1967, the United States won the gold medal at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg, Canada, but McFadden skipped the competition to marry Dan McFadden, a former basketball player at Yale. They later divorced but have two sons, Danny, a freshman infielder at El Camino College, and Kevin, a high school soccer player who lives with his father in New Jersey.

In 1968, McFadden was a setter on the U.S. squad that finished eighth at the politically charged Olympics in Mexico City. That was the year Mexican troops opened fire on several thousand unarmed students who were staging a rally at a plaza 10 days before the Games started. It was also the year American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos created an uproar with their Black Power salute at the medal ceremonies for the men’s 200 meters. McFadden remembers the events distinctly.

“I got to be very good friends with those guys, especially John Carlos,” McFadden said. “A group of us went out to dinner the night before (the incident). They were in a lot of turmoil and had a lot of feelings. They said they were going to do something but didn’t say what.

“I watched them from the stands and I remember thinking, ‘What are they doing?’ We never thought of it being a real big deal.”

McFadden remained with the American team through a sixth-place finish at the 1971 Pan American Games in Cali, Colombia, but retired before the 1972 Olympics in Munich because of tendinitis in the knees.

Still, McFadden spent several days in Munich, where 11 Israeli athletes were murdered--two in the Olympic Village--by Palestinian terrorists. Those were also the Olympics of glory for Mark Spitz and his seven gold medals in swimming and of despair for American sprinters Eddie Hart and Rey Robinson, who missed their quarterfinal heats in the 100 meters because of a schedule snafu.

“John Carlos got me a pass to the Olympic Village and I was there the day before the shootings. I was at the airport the day it happened,” McFadden said. “Later, when I got home, I opened LIFE magazine and saw myself in a picture, sitting behind Eddie Hart and Rey Robinson in the stands. Those were a lot of exciting times.”

After a hiatus to have her sons, McFadden became a teacher and volleyball coach at Punahu in the early ‘80s and then at El Segundo High from 1986 until last year.

She was given the Ventura job when Sharon McAlexander, a friend and former foe from UCLA, resigned after last season and recommended McFadden. The Pirates were successful under McAlexander--two WSC titles in four seasons--and McFadden is hoping to keep that tradition alive.