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Whenever I get frustrated about sexism and “glass” ceilings these days in the United States, I always try to take a breath and think about how things were just 50 years ago.

That is the period chronicled in the documentary “Rise,” which looks at the lives of those who died in a 1961 plane crash that killed the entire United States Figure Skating team’s travelling party on its way to the World Championships in Prague.

The woman who was considered a matriarch of the sport at that time, Maribel Vinson Owen, perished in the accident along with her two national-champion daughters. The film does a very good job portraying that family’s dynamics, and the struggles that Vinson Owen had as a working woman with great ambition and drive at a time when those qualities were discouraged in females.

She was born in 1911, so she was a young adult in the 1930s, when the Great Depression still hovered over the nation, and into 1940s, when World War II’s demand for soldiers meant American women moved in unprecedented numbers into jobs that previously were almost always the domain of men.

By the 1950s, Vinson Owen’s against-the-grain personality was firmly established, and she had two children to support after her ex-husband’s death. The 1950s backlash against the gains women had made in all endeavors had somewhat less of an effect on Vinson Owen, I would theorize, because she was already who she was.

But what about women who were a generation younger than her and came of age in the 1950s and early ‘60s?

That’s one of the things I found myself thinking about a lot after I’d done a story in the Kansas City Star in 2001 – the 40^th anniversary of the crash – about our local connection to the ’61 team. Steffi Westerfeld, 17, had been the runner-up at nationals to Laurence Owen; Sherri Westerfeld, 25, was accompanying her younger sister to the World Championships.

Steffi and Sherri died in the crash, leaving behind their mother, Myra, who grieved her enormous loss until her own death in 1984.

As I researched the Westerfelds’ story and then continued to get to “know” these young women through conversations with their surviving loved ones and friends, I wondered about what it must have been like to be a talented, educated young female in the 1950s-60s in the United States.

During the post-war years, the need to re-establish male primacy in the work force and a so-called sense of “normality” in home life didn’t just mean that opportunities for females stopped progressing. They actually regressed.

Many high schools that had team sports for girls disbanded the squads. Many universities and trade schools that previously had accepted women became more likely to turn them down. There was little in the public dialogue or popular culture in the 1950s that encouraged girls to aspire to anything more than becoming “model” housewives and mothers.

One woman who in 1948 was denied admission to every medical school to which she applied, despite her strong undergraduate performance, was Patsy Mink. Instead, she turned her focus to law school, which also wasn’t easy for a woman to get into. But she did, then eventually became a U.S. representative from Hawaii and authored Title IX, which was signed into law in 1972.

The 1950s had nationally celebrated athletic success stories for women in sports such as figure skating, tennis, diving, skiing and golf. The world championship for women’s basketball began in the 1950s, too, although few people outside the hoops world knew it existed.

The 1960 Olympics, both Winter and Summer, had produced female stars as well. But much of the limited coverage of the success of women athletes back then focused on their appearance. This was a time when editors didn’t even think twice about putting a headline such as this on a story: “Pretty girls can win!”

In the world at large, so many avenues seemed either shut down or severely restricted to girls and women. Betty Friedan’s novel “The Feminine Mystique” _ a cultural phenomenon that helped spark the subsequent women’s liberation movement – was still two years from publication in 1961. The tide was just barely starting to turn.

Steffi Westerfeld would have headed to college in the fall of ’61 had the crash not happened. Where might her life have gone after high school? She may have continued skating at least through the 1964 Olympics. She was an exceptionally talented pianist, too, and may have tried to find a career in music.

All her life, she had been drawn to anything that was painstakingly graceful, that required you to do it just right. She excelled at two intense, practice-heavy disciplines: skating and classical piano.

In my view years later, never getting the chance to meet Steffi, her short life seemed very regimented and suffocating. Yet she was always described as effervescent and energetic, a “breath of spring” as one of her friends put it. So she either hid her stress very well or she processed it in ways people didn’t necessarily see.

As pretty and talented as she was, Steffi displayed no sense of superiority. A native of Kansas City, she had a middle-class, Midwestern modesty. She was definitely on the quiet side _ one skater who saw her at infrequent intervals said, “You could never quite remember her voice” _ but was always approachable and friendly. She remained the same even as she kept piling up accomplishments.

In October 1960, Steffi won a statewide piano competition in Colorado and could have gone against many of the nation’s best young pianists in Philadelphia in February 1961 _ had she not trumped that in January by making the team to go to figure skating’s World Championships.

None of this struck her as even faintly remarkable; like many high achievers, she saw only what she hadn’t done yet.

Skater Barbara Roles, who won a bronze in the 1960 Olympics, once told me, “Steffi had a very quick smile and sparkling eyes, but she was quiet. Her sister was way more outgoing, more aggressive and fun and open. She was older, so she was probably more sure of herself, too.”

Sherri had a strong sense of accountability for her family, especially after her parents’ divorce radically changed their dynamic. But as responsible as she was, she also gave people the idea she was willing to do the unexpected.

Sherri may have had a sense of longing for something beyond the perfectly ironed and coiffed world every 1950s girl was supposed to want to live in. It wasn’t that Sherri didn’t do fine in that world, though, because she did.

She learned how to cook and joined a sorority and entered beauty pageants. She seemed an excellent candidate for marriage and motherhood promptly after getting her college degree in psychology, something she wasn’t expected to actually need or use.

She appeared headed down such a predictable path for the 1950s, but ended up on a different route, perhaps as much by chance as choice. Which maybe isn’t so surprising.

What you sometimes see in Sherri’s eyes in photographs at all different times in her life appears to be wistfulness, even when she’s smiling. As if she’s waiting for something to happen, but isn’t at all sure it ever will.

What did happen, what impacted her life more than anything, was the birth of her sister. Sherri had been an only child for eight and half years when parents had another baby relatively late in life.

Steffi came when her father, Otto, was 43 and Myra 39. She was as close to flawless as a child can be: adorable, even-tempered, talented and _ defying logic, considering the amount of attention she got _ not at all self-centered.

Steffi wanted to please people, especially her parents, and most especially her mother. She didn’t talk back; she didn’t disagree. She was meticulous in appearance and action.

“She had to be; Myra wouldn’t allow for anything else,” said Eileen Honnen, a 1948 Olympian who was one of Steffi’s early coaches and became a friend of the family.

But the consensus among those who regularly saw interaction between mother and daughter was that Steffi really didn’t mind, because to a large degree her personality was suited to meet Myra’s expectations.

Steffi spent most of her life within a small radius of the center of her world: the Broadmoor skating rink. School was a half-mile from there; home just a mile further.

But what a beautiful little world it was. Cheyenne Mountain stood behind the Broadmoor, part of the section of the Rockies that is the majestic western border of Colorado Springs.

You can look at it now _ or 50 years from now _ and know it’s much the same as it was when Steffi might have glanced up at it.

Cheyenne Mountain High School isn’t the same; it moved just down the road not long after the senior year Steffi didn’t get to finish there. The junior high is in its old place now.

The Broadmoor isn’t the same; they tore down the rink in the early ’90s and built a new arena a few miles away. A section of guest rooms is now where the old rink stood. But they kept the trees that were next to it. Especially at shadowy dusk, you can stare at the mountains and imagine the way things used to look there.

Sherri, who’d been a teen-ager when she and her mother and sister moved to Colorado, loved living there. She’d been a skater, too, but never had really enjoyed competition. She was just as happy to have Myra’s focus go toward Steffi’s blossoming career, and there was never the slightest sense of rivalry between the sisters.

But it did seem that Sherri to a degree put her life on a hold a bit as she continued to live with her mother and sister into her mid-20s. She kept one big secret from her mother, however, which wasn’t revealed until after her death.

In 1959, she had married a friend from another country in order to help him stay in the United States. There was no actual relationship component to the marriage; he was involved with someone whom he couldn’t marry.

When I researched my story, I talked to this man, who still maintained the façade that he’d been in a real marriage and had grieved the loss of his “wife” for 40 years. His tale didn’t add up for several reasons, and it took only a minimal amount of research and a couple of phone calls to others to figure out the truth.

What I never could know, though, was how Sherri had planned to deal with it had she lived. Was there a pre-arranged agreement for when they would divorce? What would she have done if she’d met someone who she really did want to marry during this time? Was she prepared for the legal issues that she may have had to face?

Even the survivors who’d been closest to her that I’d talked to didn’t know the answers. They were left wondering by the crash.

Ultimately, there were questions I had about both sisters that simply never could be answered, because they were the only ones who knew what the answers were.

Steffi was on the verge of adulthood, and that would have freed Sherri to perhaps pursue things that she hadn’t while she served as sort of the second “parent” in the home.

I never got a sense that Sherri had minded that, but soon enough, she wasn’t going to be needed in that role. Would the conventionality of the 1950s continue to have shaped her choices? Or would she have really pushed against that and become more the person she may always have wanted to be?

Steffi would have reached her early 20s right in the middle of the 1960s. Would she have aggressively pursued a career? How would her approach to that have been different than her older sister’s was?

The crash took away their opportunities to make these decisions. It’s only natural to speculate, to try to fill in the blanks.

But they really can’t be filled.

“If she went into a room that was dark, she’d be the light bulb.”

_ Mike Michelson on his sister, Rhode

The coastline in Wilmington, Calif., is quite different than the beautiful, languid beaches just to the north or south in greater Los Angeles. This is an industrial area, one of refineries, docks, cargo and backaches. This is business, not pleasure.

When Phineus Banning helped settled the area in the mid-1800s, he named it after his hometown in Delaware and helped develop one of the largest and busiest seaports in the world.

Nearby are his family home _ a small oasis _ and a high school named after him. A few miles east in Long Beach is McHelen Avenue, from where you can’t see the ugly, endless jungle of pipes, tanks and gigantic crates that clog the shore.

On McHelen, you’re in a neatly kept, working-class Southern California neighborhood with stucco-finished homes dating back to the ’30s and ’40s and painted a variety of colors.

The home at 21808 McHelen is tan, and you can imagine that once, there was an energetic little girl running around inside this house, getting into everything, exhausting her mother.

Or, at least I can imagine this because of what I’d been told about Rhode Lee Michelson from the people who knew her, all of whom seem to have exceptionally vivid memories of her. She would grow up to go to Banning High School, but she wouldn’t finish there. Her life would end during her senior year.

With any tragic accident, there are always levels of improbability for various victims. There were several reasons why Rhode might not have been on Flight 548 headed to Prague in February 1961. But she was, indeed, aboard.

In retrospect, it was almost like “Fate” – if such an entity existed – had first cleared a path for her to make the trip, then changed its mind and threw out some roadblocks that she still motored past.

Rhode – her name was pronounced “Roe-dee” _ had suffered injuries around the time of both the nationals and then the North American championships. Others had doubts, even if she didn’t, about her readiness to compete in the World Championships. She convinced everyone she would be able to do it. There was no way she was missing that trip.

Rhode had earned her ticket by placing third at the ’61 nationals, a result that would have seemed somewhat improbable a year earlier. Fellow Californian Barbara Roles, who had won a bronze medal in the 1960 Olympics, appeared to be a favorite as the next women’s national champion. But marriage and pregnancy intervened, and Roles didn’t skate in 1961.

If she had, the odds were that Rhode may not have cracked the top three in the ‘61 U.S. championships. Not because she wasn’t a very good skater. In fact, if you watch the black-and-white televised performances from the ’61 Nationals, you would see Rhode was the most athletically-talented free skater among the women.

But the hierarchy of skating was pretty rigid. Had one additional older, established skater such as Roles still been in the mix, it may not have been deemed Rhode’s “turn” yet. Plus, as was the case with many great free skaters for the decades when compulsaries were 60 percent of the final score, Rhode’s best abilities were far undervalued then in a way they wouldn’t be now. She represented skating’s athletic future.

Rhode wasn’t as graceful as 1961 nationals winner Laurence Owen or runner-up Steffi Westerfeld – either on or off the ice – but her speed, jumps and air of fearlessness set her apart. Rhode, born in 1943, had grown into a young adult in the 1950s, but she seemed far less bound by restraints on how girls “should act” than most of her peers. She was regarded as the aggressive, brassy, often-hilarious Californian by many skaters in the rest of the country, the girl who said things others wouldn’t and did things that other didn’t dare.

Rhode had dark hair and green eyes, and an obviously mischievous grin evident in photographs. She walked with an impatient stride, always in a hurry. She skated hard and very fast, without hesitation or uncertainty. There was a “Could you please get the hell out of my way … thank you,” quality to Rhode.

The boys who trained at the same rink in greater LA were fascinated _ and motivated _ by this girl whom they saw wasn’t afraid of anything. Many of them started trying to attack the ice the way she did.

Unlike Laurence and Steffi, Rhode had an everyday father. Laurence’s parents had divorced when she was very young, and then her father had died. Steffi had moved with her mother and sister to Colorado Springs from Kansas City when she was just 5; she saw her father on visits, but he wasn’t in her life for long stretches of time. And then Steffi’s parents, when she was in her teens, divorced, too.

Rhode got a lot of her personality, humor and independence from her dad, Arthur. No one in her family had ever been into competitive figure skating, so Rhode created her own path starting around age 7. This was another way she was very different than Laurence and Steffi, who both had older sisters who skated and mothers who were the driving forces in their lives and careers.

Rhode didn’t have a sister, she had a younger brother. And she didn’t skate because anyone else had ever pushed or guided her, even a little. She pushed plenty hard all by herself.

If told there were things she shouldn’t or couldn’t do on the ice, she’d all the more relish doing them. By 1960, she was working on triple jumps in practice, something no woman then had ever tried in competition. Her daredevil athleticism made some say her skating wasn’t “feminine” enough, that judges wanted “the girls to be girls.”

But her father told her to skate the way she wanted to. He assured her it really was less important what others, even judges, thought of her than what she thought of herself. Cream always rises to the top, he’d say.

Besides, he knew she would do it her way no matter what he said.

***

I’ve covered sports my whole career, and the athletes I’m always most drawn to write about are “Rhode types.” They can be misunderstood, because their independent nature doesn’t intend to cause trouble. But if it does, so be it. They just simply must follow the voice in their own heads.

They are the kids who passionately want to master what they do and be great at it; they have this inner reserve of unbreakable confidence. Even today, I find that’s a pretty rare quality in girls: To be that sure of themselves, deep in their souls.

They may come across as rebellious, but they are not undisciplined; they usually work harder than anybody else at what they love to do. They are kids who can drive coaches crazy, because they always need to know “why,” they sometimes will roll their eyes, and they will not do things just to please somebody if they don’t believe there’s really a point to doing them.

As an observer, I absolutely love all of that. Of course, I don’t have to coach them.

Yet another way Rhode’s story differed from Steffi’s and Laurence’s was that four decades after the crash, there was still a surviving immediate family member for Rhode: her brother.

Wayne “Mike” Michelson had been a speed skater, aged 14, when his 17-year-old sister was killed. One evening in the spring of 2001, I called Mike to ask him if he’d mind talking about Rhode. I wasn’t sure exactly what I might do with what he’d tell me if he wanted to discuss it. Would I write a book someday, or a magazine article, or a story on-line, or would it just be something I’d keep to myself?

I was prepared for him to say “no,” that it was too painful or too distant or he didn’t have time … but that wasn’t his reaction at all.

“I love to talk about my sister,” Mike said. “But nobody ever asks me.”

He later acknowledged he just didn’t open up to his true emotions about it – not really _ to his wife, son or daughter, even when they did inquire.

“I’ve just separated myself from that for so many years,” he said, “because it was such a bad memory.”

Yet both on the phone and then later in person, we talked for hours. It is something reporters experience at times. It can be because someone has built up a relationship with you, or because they seem to sense right away that you care. In Mike’s case, I guessed that a good outlet for him was talking to an interested, sympathetic outsider.

“She’d smile at you and you’d have to smile back at her, no matter what she did or what kind of trouble she created,” he told me of Rhode. “She was a hell-raiser, too, in her own way.”

Listening to Mike really made Rhode come alive in my mind. He explained that at Paramount’s Iceland, where he and Rhode spent so much time growing up, the “battle lines” were clear.

Figure skaters were supposed to be on the inner portion of the rink, speed skaters on the outside. Except for Rhode, who went wherever she wanted.

“My sister was the only one who would challenge it. Sometime she’d deliberately time a jump so it would be in our way,” Mike said, laughing at the memory. “And I was the only one who would challenge back. She pretty much dominated everybody but her little brother. And I knew my mother would take care of me.”

In reflecting on his sister’s personality, Mike said, “I think she would have gotten more tactful with age _ still been as strong-willed and much like she was, but probably more tactful. She didn’t fit into any category; there wasn’t one formed yet to describe her.

“I often tell my son _ he competed in running and soccer _ that if you held your fingers a quarter of an inch apart, that’s the difference between people who really want to be No. 1 and people who don’t. That’s all it is. I didn’t have that, and a lot of people I knew didn’t. My sister did. She had more desire to do it than anybody I knew.”

***

After spending a few days in LA in the summer of 2001, seeing where Rhode had lived her short life and was buried, I drove up to Fresno, Calif., to see Mike.

He and his wife, Linda, had lived in Fresno many years; their two children were grown. Mike and I sat at a large table throughout the morning and afternoon, looking at all the items that had belonged to or concerned his sister.

He still had the hope chest she’d left behind. “Now, it houses all her memories,” he said.

I sometimes asked Mike questions as we looked at things, and sometimes stayed quiet, waiting for him to process what he was thinking and tell me.

Among the things were Rhode’s baby book, one of her first-grade report cards, articles on her skating success, a jewelry box, an address book (which contained contact info for a young California skater named Peggy Fleming), congratulatory telegrams she’d received before going to the World Championships, and letters that had come from various officials after the accident.

There were also some items that had been collected from the crash scene and sent back to the grieving family – after they paid for postage. A charred crucifix necklace puzzled her parents; they had never seen her wear anything like that. Rhode’s mother, Marty, was Jewish and her father was Lutheran, and Mike said he didn’t recall Rhode ever going to church or synagogue.

Mike wondered if someone Rhode knew – she was very outgoing – had given her the crucifix after a conversation about religion. Rhode was interested in everything. She’d wanted to learn more about Judaism and Christianity, about communism, about medicine, about the whole world around her.

A cloth pouch that held the record needed for her free-skating performance came back without the record. The pouch, a bit water-damaged from the fire hoses used on the crash site, was white, with the initials “RLM” sewn on it.

“Did she make this herself?” I asked. Mike’s answer was one of the many times that day he made me laugh even though we were both feeling rather sad.

“Well, she could sew a little,” he said. “But she was good at telling my mother to sew.”

There was her plane ticket, charred around the edges. There was a black luggage tag, with Rhode’s name and address easily readable. Decades later, it was still caked with mud from the Belgian field into which the plane had crashed.

To touch such items _ knowing they had been on that plane as it plummeted and disintegrated, that they had been scattered amidst the wreckage and bodies _ produced an eerie and yet intimate feeling of connection to the past and to the dead.

Mike explained how they found out about the crash, early on Feb. 15. There was one phone in the house, in the kitchen, and it rang around 3 a.m. Pacific time, waking up Mike and his parents. One of the members of the skating club Rhode and Mike belonged to was calling to see if they’d heard the news.

“My dad said, ‘Have I heard what?’ My mother was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, and then my dad said to her, ‘We lost our daughter.’ ”

For weeks afterward, Mike said, “My parents spent most of the time at the kitchen table just sobbing. I’m sure every family went through the same thing. We got a lot of support from family and friends, but there was nobody trained to help you.”

No one in his family went to counseling for their grief, which Mike later regretted. But in the early ‘60s, mental-health counseling just wasn’t something that was commonplace, even after such a trauma.

“All three of us needed help; it would have made a difference in each one of our lives,” Mike said. “How I dealt with it was shutting it off and talking about it just briefly. The one I feel sorry for is my mother, though. She was totally devastated. It was like a fog hanging over the house to me … my mother never really got out of it.”

Mike left speed skating for a while – even driving him to the rink, he knew, was now emotionally difficult for his parents – then went back to it for a few years. But he knew he’d irrevocably lost some of his desire. His hope had been to compete in the ’64 Winter Games with Rhode, to be brother-and-sister Olympians.

“One of my awards is a pair of silver skates,” he said. “And even today when I walk by that, I think of us.”

Mike and I went to a restaurant that evening, and the conversation somehow alternated effortlessly between the heavy and the light. He very much loved his own family, and it seemed serendipitous that he and Linda first had a daughter and then a son, born about three years apart. Just like Rhode and him.

“The crash deprived my kids and my wife of knowing her,” he said. “I know they would have loved her. If she went into a room that was dark, she’d be the light bulb.”

***

I’ve often wondered, in the past 10 years since I first really got to know about the people on Sabena Flight 548, why their stories meant so much to me. After all, there are tragedies every single day in which people who are filled with promise die young, and mourning loved ones are left behind to get through the rest of their lives.

But in particular, Rhode’s story mattered to me. Like the other teen-aged girls on the ’61 team, she was reaching the pinnacle of her athletic career more than a decade before Title IX. Had she been born 20 or 30 years later, maybe she still would have been a figure skater … or maybe she’d have ended up in another sport because there would have been so many more options.

Her relationship with her brother was very compelling to me, too. Over the years, I’ve found that I’m drawn again and again to certain themes with female athletes, important things they share in common. Those who have brothers – often older ones, but sometimes younger ones, too – frequently talk about their influence.

A boy who willingly or grudgingly lets his sister tag along to the playground _ or who tags along after her _ would never think of it as socially significant. Yet when you consider the barriers set up between the genders historically _ which remain just as rigid in some cultures today – the idea of a brother and a sister interacting through athletics is a special thing.

And a brother who respects his sister as an athlete, who sees her accomplishments similar to how he sees his own, who really does not view what she does through the prism of “she’s just a girl” … that boy may not realize he is casting aside so much sad, frustrating history of females being undervalued or not valued at all. But he is.

“I paid attention to how good she was at skating,” Mike said of Rhode. “She loved performing; what athlete doesn’t? When she didn’t do well, she took it hard at the moment and came back fighting. She was a real fighter.

“We would argue an awful lot, maybe more so than most brothers and sisters. But nobody else could say anything about me, I’ll tell you that. She wouldn’t stand for it. She looked out for me.

“We didn’t have the opportunity to become adults together. I think we would have had a great relationship, been great friends. I got the feeling from talking to her that when she got done skating, we would spend a lot more time together.”

One of the things that had been in the hope chest was a card that Rhode mailed to her family just before she left for Czechoslovakia, then under Communist rule. She was a constant prankster and jokester, and so of course she sent a funny card.

The front had a cartoon drawing of a man who appeared to be Russian staring with alarm at guns pointed at him. Inside was the punch line, a play on words: “I hope you miss me, comrade.”

Rhode wrote: “I thought maybe you would like something like this before I leave for the Iron Curtain. Hope to see you again!”

It was about 1:30 in the morning when I left Mike’s house. We’d finished our marathon conversation while in his garage looking over the cars he was restoring. It was as if talking about other things, and interspersing thoughts about his sister as they came to him, was helping him realize how he’d balanced the rest of his life with his painful loss.

There was something still bothering Mike. There’d been a dispute when his sister died between her grandfather, who had wanted her buried in Jewish custom, and her father, who didn’t. She was interred in a plot that her aunt owned, but no marker was put on Rhode’s grave. And there still wasn’t one 40 years later.

Mike felt bad about that, saying he needed to give his sister a grave marker. But every time he’d thought of it, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Because that would be permanent.

“I’ve had dreams that she wasn’t on the plane,” Mike said. “That she just appeared, that she was walking home, she didn’t make the flight. I think you carry that into your everyday life. You always think that she’s gone, but it’s only temporary.”

I thanked Mike for all his time, but then he thanked me.

“That stuff we went through today is the first time I’ve really gone through it,” he said. “It’s getting closer to closure. But maybe I don’t want closure, down deep.”

I drove away, but I kept thinking of that card Rhode had sent.

“I hope you miss me, comrade.”

Yes, her brother still did.

***

Rhode was not Mike’s only loss. Their father died about five years after the crash of heart failure at age 49. Their mother lived until the 1980s, dying of a stroke.

I didn’t know if I’d ever see Mike again, but I thought of him several times, and how he was the same kind of “tough guy” with a soft heart and wry sense of humor that my own dad had been. I thought about how so many boys and men feel compelled to internalize emotional things that they are afraid or even embarrassed to talk about … but that once they do, they find some weight they’ve long carried is lifted off them.

Years went by, and I wrote a lot of the essay that you’ve just read in different pieces at different times. The term “Rhode types” became part of my internal vocabulary for story subjects; I wrote about one not long ago.

The 1961 team was honored at the national championships last month in Greensboro, N.C. Not long after I arrived there, talking to some other relatives of crash victims, I found out that Mike had passed away suddenly, in November 2006, at age 60. But that his wife and son, Jeff, were there to see the induction of the team into the U.S Figure Skating Hall of Fame.

Even though I’d talked to Mike’s wife for only a few minutes 10 years earlier when I’d visited their home – she’d left that morning for a trip – I recognized her right away when I walked into the room where the ceremony was held. She remembered me, too, and introduced me to Jeff, who is in his early 30s.

We talked about how Mike would have loved this recognition for Rhode, and I thought how proud he would be that his wife and son had traveled from California to North Carolina to honor the sister-in-law/aunt they had never met. They told me that Rhode now has a grave marker. It reads: “Beloved daughter & sister.”

Family members present were called forward to accept silver cups commemorating those with the 1961 U.S. figure skating traveling party who’d perished on Flight 548. As Rhode’s name and accomplishments were read, Linda squeezed Jeff’s hand, and then he went to get the cup. I could tell that as Jeff looked at it, he was missing his father.

So maybe the best way to think about it when people leave us really is this: They’re gone, but it’s only temporary.

Still, a decent-sized crowd came to stay late on a school night, a Thursday, to see the women’s short program of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Three young women later sat at a podium, having placed 1-2-3 that evening, setting themselves up for a showdown in the long program two nights later. One of them earlier had been asked about her very active Twitter account, and she responded, “I do that so you guys can quote me.”

Later, as I walked to my car while appreciating weather that felt comparatively warm, my mind traveled back in time. It was quite cold in Colorado Springs that January night 50 years ago when a group of talented people unknowingly sealed their tragic fate by performing well in competition.

The skaters who competed at figure skating’s national championships back then had no notion of a “short” program – it didn’t exist as part of competition until 1973 – and, of course, wouldn’t have been able to conceive of Twitter.

How about professional skaters being eligible for the Olympics? Women skaters routinely doing triple-triple combinations? A complex, points-accumulating scoring system no longer based on 6.0s? All would be in the future _ something the top skaters at the 1961 nationals didn’t have much of left.

No other U.S. sport has been so irrevocably changed by a few horrifying, heartbreaking minutes. That’s how long it took for the plane’s loss of control while attempting to land, its subsequent plunge, the impact and the explosion.

At 10:05 a.m. on Feb. 15, 1961, the 18 members of the U.S. figure skating team _ en route to the World Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia _ died when a Sabena 707 jet crashed in a field near the airport in Brussels, Belgium. Also killed were 16 relatives, officials and coaches accompanying them.

Weather was a non-factor; the skies were blue. There was no distress call made from the pilots to the tower. Mechanical failure or malfunction, perhaps with the plane’s stabilizers, has long been suspected as a culprit. But no definitive cause has been assigned to why the plane went down, killing all 72 aboard and a man on the ground.

Ten figure skating families lost two or more members in the crash, including five sets of siblings. Children were orphaned. The ’61 World Championships were cancelled. But U.S. figure skating had to move on despite the weight of grief and the large-scale loss of so much talent in both performance and coaching.

People across the country were touched by the tragedy, and they wanted to do something. Some loved figure skating, others knew nothing about it. But they all saw that picture that ran in newspapers nationwide: Those smiling young people, on the brink of an exciting trip, posing before they got on a plane that never reached its destination.

Thus, U.S. Figure Skating started a fund in their memory. Tragedy has a way of sparking interest and change. Dominoes fell everywhere. Some folks who’d never paid attention to skating before began to care about it. More kids wanted to skate, and new rinks were built around the country.

Much knowledge and talent had been lost, so the pace of skaters and coaches climbing in the elite levels was accelerated. Television responded, choosing to air more skating.

The U.S. Figure Skating Association made structural and philosophical changes. And the money from what’s still known as the Memorial Fund has helped virtually every serious U.S. figure skating competitor since. That, above all, is the legacy that continues to give comfort to those who knew the crash victims.

The horrible ending to Flight 548 was the beginning of the Memorial Fund. And it’s in that spirit of celebrating hope from tragedy that the USFSA commissioned a documentary called “Rise,” which will air in theaters in every state on Thursday, Feb. 17.

That comes two days after the 50^th anniversary of the crash, and proceeds from the showing of the documentary will go to the Memorial Fund.

The documentary was done by twin sisters Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern, whose company, Lookalike Productions, also made ESPN’s “30 for 30” film “Unmatched” on the rivalry and friendship between tennis legends Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert.

“Rise” provides background about the 1961 team but also tells the story through the voices of a group of very famous American skaters: Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, Scott Hamilton, Brian Boitano and Michelle Kwan.

Fleming was 12 at the time of the crash, and a coach she worked with, Bill Kipp, was killed on the flight. Had the accident not happened, Fleming may not have gone to the 1964 Olympics, if the three women’s singles skaters lost in 1961 had still been alive and competing.

But she did go, and it was valuable experience for her. By the next Olympics, in 1968, she was the embodiment of the amazing recovery of U.S. Figure Skating, winning the only gold medal for the United States in the Grenoble Games. She has always credited the Memorial Fund for helping her by providing some skates, no small expense.

Over the years, much has been written in remembrance of the crash victims and how their loss ended up benefiting so many people. Among the best accounts were a series of stories by the Boston Globe in late December 2000 in anticipation of the accident’s 40^th anniversary.

The Boston-area skating community had been hit very hard by the crash, and in January 2001, the national championships were held in that city. It was a perfect time to reflect on the lives lost but also the ground gained in the sport in the four decades since the accident – and the result was some magnificent journalism by the newspaper.

My colleague at ESPN.com, Olympics writer Bonnie Ford, has an in-depth look at the crash on its 50^th anniversary and the Memorial Fund’s continuing impact, as the deep emotions felt by those who loved the victims continue on a half-century later. During the national championships last month, the 1961 World Team was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame, which brought so many feelings powerfully back to the forefront for the survivors.

ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap had a moving tribute to the team on “Outside the Lines” this past weekend.

Patricia Shelley Bushman, a former competitive skater, spent eight years researching and writing a very detailed account of the fallen skaters, the crash and the aftermath. Her definitive book, “Indelible Tracings: The Story of the 1961 U.S. World Figure Skating Team” gives great insight into all the competitors, officials, coaches and family members aboard the flight.

The title of her book is inspired. While tracings on ice eventually always melt away, the mark left by the lost skaters is, indeed, never-fading.

As I left Greensboro Coliseum that night last month, thinking of how puzzled those skaters of 1961 would have been about some things now, I also thought of it in reverse. Because there were also things that would have been very familiar to the competitors of 50 years ago, but rather alien to today’s skaters.

Compulsaries – also known as school figures – were the intricate tracings of variations of figure eights. That used to be a huge part of the sport _ 60 percent of the score through 1968 – along with free skating. They were arcane to everyone outside of skating, and useless for television purposes.

Especially because of that fact _ they were no good for TV _ they were abandoned as part of competition after 1990.

Skaters’ practice for compulsaries used to take up an enormous amount of their time. I imagined the skaters of today shaking their heads to hear of their predecessors spending so many hours on patches of ice _ going forward and backward, left foot and right foot, inside and outside edges _ learning and refining how to create the tracings that supposedly eagle-eyed judges would critique in competition.

Old-timers, though, will say that while today’s skaters obviously jump far higher and have raised the sport’s athleticism significantly, something was lost with the demise of school figures as an important, judged element of the sport. To them, that was a fundamental part of being a complete skater; the concentration and control of one’s body and skate edges that was needed for figures did help their free skating.

Alas, there is no going back. And even though the sport has changed so much, there are many things that are exactly the same. Most notably, the fearlessness and discipline a person has to possess to reach the top levels of the sport.

In that way, the skaters of 2011 and those of 1961 would have had a very strong bond, an shared understanding of what it is to spend so many morning, afternoons and nights mastering a craft on a cold, hard, unforgiving surface.

The 1956 gold medalist Tenley Albright once said, “If you don’t fall, you’re not learning anything.” She went on to become a surgeon, and one of the skaters who died in the crash might have followed her footsteps. Laurence Owen, the 1961 national champion in women’s singles, was on the cover of “Sports Illustrated” – she was called America’s most exciting girl skater – the week that she died.

Ten years ago, I wrote a story for The Kansas City Star about two of the crash victims who were KC natives. Steffi Westerfeld was the national runner-up in women’s singles in 1961, and was heading to her first international competition with her older sister, Sherri, along for support.

When I finished that story, I found I wasn’t emotionally “done” with it. I needed to know more about all three teen-aged girls who’d been the women’s singles skaters on that doomed 1961 World team: Laurence, Steffi and Rhode Michelson.

Having covered women’s sports as much as I have in my career, I have a keen interest in its overall history. Including that time period in the late 1950s and early ‘60s when there was such a backlash against the gains made by women during World War II. That mindset extended down to sports opportunities, which actually narrowed for girls and women in many places in the ’50s-early ’60s, rather than expanded.

These three girls, though, found their athletic destiny in a sport that was deemed “acceptable” then for females. But they were heading into an era of feminism and expanded opportunities. How would they have defined themselves in 1961, and how – had they lived – would they have adapted to the changes that followed?

These things are impossible to know, but I felt as if finding out more about them would somehow provide me some insight.

And so over the last decade, I’ve done research and kept up sort of randomly expanding “essays” about those three girls, who died as seniors in high school. I wrote them not sure if they’d ever be read by anyone but me. But throughout this month, as we’re at the 50^th anniversary of the crash, I will post the essays here on the blog.

As I said, there already are and will continue to be many fine tributes to the 1961 team. There is something undeniably captivating about the skaters, which I’m sure has touched everyone who’s looked into their stories.

Because in an ethereal way, they remain forever poised to head out on a wonderful adventure.

Each simulated attack results in a certain number of “casualties” on each side, and people are then informed they had been “killed.” Alas, with a heavy sigh, they dutifully report to disintegration booths and are executed.

The citizenry of both planets have agreed to this rather than “real” war, relieving the financial burden of rebuilding all that is destroyed by bombs, tanks, guns, etc. Plus, this kind of “war” is much better for the environment.

I’m not a “Trekkie” by any means, but bring this up because I’m wondering if it wouldn’t make more sense to handle the Stanford-Washington State womens’ hoops series like this. Uh, not disintegration booths or anything. Just have a computer simulate the game, come up with the final score, and save everybody on the cost of transportation, hotel, etc.

This matchup has been such a historical waste of time, maybe both programs would find it just as beneficial to simply fake that it happens twice a season.

I am only being a little bit facetious. Stanford beat Washington State 94-50 on Sunday, giving the Cardinal a 51-0 all-time mark against the Cougars. They’ll meet again Feb. 10 at Stanford, and that likely will be as bad if not worse.

If you’re looking for rays of light for the Cougars in this series, you’ll really have to strain your vision. Stanford won by just eight points in 2007 at Pullman, Wash. As for other close games in the series, the Cardinal won by nine in 2001, by five in 2000, by nine in 1997, by six in 1991, by five in 1988 and by four – the closest game between the two programs – in 1987.

But the overwhelming majority of games have been like Sunday’s: foregone conclusions in which the only real accomplishment for either team is that no one gets injured.

There are other lopsided series in women’s basketball in the major conferences. Mississippi State, for instance, has never beaten Tennessee. However, the Bulldogs have had good teams, and have made recent NCAA tournament appearances. They may not be able to beat the Orange Crush, but they’re not moribund as a program.

It may not seem entirely fair to say that Washington State is, considering the Cougars do have Pac-10 victories over Oregon State and Cal thus far this season.

But the Beavers are, like Washington State, perennially woeful even when that program didn’t go through nearly a nuclear meltdown in the off-season the way it did in 2010. And the Bears are a group that doesn’t seem to even know who they are this season. They won at home against Arizona and Arizona State the previous weekend, then fell to the two Washington schools on the road this past weekend.

Washington State is 4-14 overall, well on the way to the program’s 15th consecutive losing season. The Cougars’ last winning season was 1996, when they were 17-12. Their only NCAA tournament appearance was in 1991. Those two things happened during the 17-year career of Harold Rhodes, by far the longest-tenured Cougar women’s hoops head coach. He finished with a record of 194-271.

Jenny Przekwas and Sherri Murrell followed, combining to go 44-182 over the next eight years. Former Washington coach June Daugherty came to Pullman in 2007-08, and her record there is 28-80.

As a program, starting in 1971, Washington State is 422-635; the Cougars have won just 39.9 percent of their games over their four decades of existence. And it just seems remarkable – not in a good way – that a program in a major conference could be that consistently unsuccessful from the era of bellbottoms to the era of iPads.

Yeah, I know this will seem like I’m just piling on Washington State for no reason, but that’s honestly not my aim. It’s just that for years now, I’ve looked at this program and wondered, “Is there a fan out there – or even a small group of fans – who go to game after game, year after year, hoping that some day, the stars will finally align and the Cougars will be a decent team? Has anyone sat through this for years, maybe sometimes reflecting back on the “glory” season of 1991?”

Incidentally, that year, the Cougars were the No. 11 seed and lost by 20 points at Northwestern in the first round of the NCAA tournament. So I guess you could say that Washington’s State’s women’s basketball history isn’t 40 years of complete famine.

How do you turn around something like this? How does it ever change? What do you build on when you’ve never built anything to begin with? How much more of the evolution of women’s basketball nationwide do we have to see before talent can spread out so much that it may even reach Pullman, occasionally, in sufficient amounts to make any difference?

Getting off on the wrong foot in the league shouldn’t necessarily be that big of a deal, considering how much can happen through the course of the season. However, there are some fans that are very hungry – ravenous, in fact – for a chance to believe that things are going to be different this time, that there is good reason to have their hopes up.

And Saturday, the two groups of followers who likely feel the most acute sense of desperation right now saw their teams face off in a conference opener that may be a harbinger: Did we see the start of “Well, here we go again,” for Kansas and “We’re going back to the Dance” for Texas Tech?

The Jayhawks were at home and had a double-digit lead, yet still lost 61-57 – thanks to going scoreless for the last 5:15 of the game. KU coach Bonnie Henrickson has never beaten Texas Tech, which is especially telling considering this hasn’t been the powerhouse Tech team of old for a while now.

This was Henrickson’s seventh Big 12 opener, and her Jayhawks have won only one of them: at home against Texas in 2006. The other league openers were all defeats: to Texas in 2005, Iowa State in 2007, Oklahoma State in 2008 … and then two simply dreadful losses at Kansas State in 2009 and ’10. Those scores were 72-39 and 59-35.

Nothing on paper would have suggested that the Wildcats were favored in those two games, let alone that they should have clobbered the Jayhawks both times. But those losses set a tone of disappointment that KU wasn’t able to overcome either season.

The Jayhawks have the longest NCAA tournament drought of any of the Big 12 teams; Kansas’ last appearance was in 2000. KU fans probably thought last season was going to be the turnaround year _ but injuries either doomed the Jayhawks or gave them an excuse, depending on how bitterly cynical your point of view is.

There are are some in the KU fan base who’ve grown quite cynical and consider this a make-or-break season for Henrickson. Lew Perkins, who brought Henrickson to Kansas from Virginia Tech, has retired as athletics director. It remains to be seen how much a priority women’s basketball’s success will be for the new head Jayhawk, Sheahon Zenger.

Meanwhile, Tech coach Kristy Curry has faced wrath from the fans in Lubbock as well, with the Raiders attempting to get back in the NCAA field for the first time since 2005. But Tech’s rally Saturday – behind 15 points each from Kierra Mallard and Teena Wickett – moved Curry’s team to 14-1 on the season and was an very energizing way for Tech to start Big 12 play.

Tech’s lone loss so far this season was at Penn State in early December. Tech should have plenty of confidence against visiting Missouri, which is up next, on Wednesday. This despite the fact that the Tigers upset visiting Texas in overtime Saturday.  (That, no doubt, seriously ticked off Longhorns followers.) The stark reality for MU fans is that the Tigers have never won in Lubbock (0-8), although this will be coach Robin Pingeton’s first try.

While Tech fans can look at their team’s fighting spirit _  on the road, no less _ and think, “We really might have something here,” the doubts are sure to have mushroomed among KU backers. And next for the Jayhawks is what could be a treacherous trip to Colorado, KU’s last conference visit to Boulder.

The Buffaloes, of course, will be dealing with the likes of Stanford, UCLA, USC, Arizona State, etc., next year during league play. But new coach Linda Lappe wants to get at least some traction for her program in its final season in the Big 12.

After Colorado, the rest of KU’s schedule in January is this: at Nebraska, at home against Baylor and Oklahoma, then at Missouri and at Kansas State. The Jayhawks have to bounce back emotionally from the loss to Texas Tech very quickly. Because if they don’t, this season could get away from them almost before they know what’s hit them.

That’s how big those last five minutes might have been in Lawrence on Saturday.

So I put that entry on the shelf. I may decide to post it later, or maybe it’s one of those blog entries that just never sees the light of day. (It would hardly be the first.) For now, let’s just move on completely from the Bruins and their record streak for men’s basketball, and instead talk about the next few days and where the spotlight will be for women’s hoops.

As UConn brings its travelin’ show _ 89 consecutive wins and counting – to the Golden State, I find myself wondering when we might see another D-I women’s basketball national champion from the West Coast.

The Huskies play at Pacific on Tuesday night, which will be quite an event in Stockton, Calif. It’s a school that normally has no buzz about its women’s basketball program, but now – thanks to its famous visitors – will be big news for an evening.

I’ll be headed to Stockton after seeing Stanford face Xavier on Tuesday afternoon at the Cardinal’s Maples Pavilion, a rematch of last year’s exciting (but heartbreaking for the Musketeers) Elite Eight contest.

And, of course, on Thursday, UConn will play at Stanford, as the Cardinal take their turn again at trying to be the streak-buster.

Stanford is the last West Coast team to win the NCAA women’s hoops championship, in 1992, and also the only one that’s even made it to the Women’s Final Four since Long Beach State’s appearance in 1988. Over the years at various times, I’ve theorized about why that is.

There is not a single, definitive answer. It’s combination of several things. The competition from other sports, especially volleyball, that women’s hoops on the West Coast faces to get elite athletes is part of it. Pacific, for instance, has won two NCAA volleyball titles (in 1985 and ’86) and also was runner-up (in 1990).

Will there be enough upgrades in coaching (some of those more recent changes are works in progress right now) and enough recruits who decide to stay on the West Coast for there to be a women’s hoops champion from the Pacific time zone NOT named Stanford in the next decade?

For that matter, will the Cardinal break through for an NCAA title again sometime in the next 10 years?

Of course, speaking of elite athletes from California who didn’t stay anywhere near home for college, there is the pending situation with former UConn star and 2009 WNBA MVP Diana Taurasi. Turkey’s basketball federation said Friday that she had tested positive for the stimulant modafinil while playing in a pro league there.

We await the pending release of  the “B” sample of her drug test and the rest of the facts of the case to unfold. It’s way, way too early in the process with Taurasi – potential doping cases are quagmires in every sport – to predict what’s going to happen.

We do know what a worst-case scenario could be: the end of her Olympic career, and a major issue for the WNBA to have to confront. And right now, the league is looking for a new president. Or this could end up being not anything nearly that severe.

All things to reflect on we go west to end 2010.

In a recent WNBA.com Q and A, the New York Liberty’s new coach/general manager John Whisenant discussed various topics, including the final season of the Sacramento Monarchs.

Whisenant has his new opportunity in the Big Apple and a superstar player in Cappie Pondexter; life seems pretty good for him. So it’s hard to understand why he would feel the need to distort anything that happened at Sacramento.

Here is Whisenant’s answer about the 2009 Monarchs season, according to WNBA.com’s Frank Della Femina: “I was general manager. I hired my own replacement after the 2006 season. People had wondered why, but in a six-month period during that last season and shortly after, I lost both my mom and dad, and it just felt like the right thing to do at that time. The coach I hired wasn’t doing well in ’09. We were 3-14 or something like that with much the same team that had won the WNBA championship [in 2005], so I came in and finished the year. We had finished 9-8, but started 3-14 in the first half, and going 9-8 wasn’t enough to make the playoffs.”

Let’s first say this: Anybody who is reading a WNBA.com Q and A in December is already a follower of the league, and certainly knows “the coach I hired” refers to Jenny Boucek, an aid to head coach Brian Agler this past season for the champion Seattle Storm. Whisenant doesn’t need to reference her as if she’s some kind of persona non grata in the WNBA.

Boucek was 40-41 as a head coach and made the playoffs in both her two full seasons leading the Monarchs. When Whisenant decided to replace her and take the job back, the Monarchs were not 3-14. They were 3-10, and had just come off a 107-105 loss at Phoenix, the team that would go on to win the WNBA title that year.

And he as Monarchs coach did not finish 9-8 that season, as he makes it sound. He was 9-12, and the Monarchs at 12-22 overall finished last in the Western Conference, two games behind fifth-place Minnesota. There was no valiant surge to the playoffs. Later that year, the franchise folded.

It’s notable that Whisenant says the 2009 team was “much the same” as the one that won the WNBA title in 2005, as if that was supposed to prove it was all Boucek’s fault that the Monarchs were struggling. In fact, the franchise’s lack of talent upgrading over the course of four years after the title was a part of the problem in 2009, and that was Whisenant’s responsibility, as he was GM.

Look, Whisenant went through difficult personal times and stepped away from coaching. Anyone could empathize with that. But after a couple of years, he wanted his old job back in Sacramento. And when the team hit a rough patch, it gave him an opening to get it.

Whisenant has a WNBA title on his coaching resume, and the Liberty management thinks he can do the same in New York. He may have a very favorable future there. But he should take care not to alter past records. People do notice.

Does that mean any of them will beat UConn? We won’t go so far as to predict anything like that. One’s already had its chance, and may get another in the NCAA tournament. But, overall, Tuesday was an interesting night to examine what was going on beyond the bright spotlight shining on Hartford.

Baylor, ranked No. 2, took care of any upset thoughts by Syracuse (which had knocked off Ohio State previously) with a 77-43 win in the Bahamas. The Bears remain the closest challengers to UConn during the streak, after their one-point loss to the Huskies on Nov. 16.

On a night when UCLA’s men’s program of the 1970s was given so much attention by UConn’s streak extension, the current-day Bruins women’s team moved to 10-0 with a win over East Carolina in Hawaii.

West Virginia – could they pose a threat to UConn during Big East play? – stayed undefeated with an exercise in inevitability against overmatched North Carolina Central. DePaul, after its big upset against Stanford last week, was toppled at Arizona State.

But the supposed “game of the night” that wasn’t played in Connecticut is mostly what we’re going to look at here. It was in Durham, N.C., and No. 3 Duke defeated No. 4 Xavier 46-45.

Clank! Uggh! Yuck!

Yep, that’s two of your top-five teams in the country, folks, committing a crime against offense that could have made people run screaming out of Cameron Indoor Stadium.

As this is the fourth season of “McCallie ball” at Duke, one would assume that Blue Devil fans now have grown rather resigned to some relatively frequent low scores. Not that Xavier didn’t play its part in this clunker, too, because it did: committing 30 turnovers and shooting 8.3 percent (1 of 12) from 3-point range.

The teams combined to be 3 of 27 from behind the arc, a percentage that likely could have been duplicated if they’d played blindfolded. Overall, Duke shot a sizzling 26.8 percent from the field as the program continues in its quest to become the Rutgers of the South: a place where talented players go to focus on defense and forget how to make shots.

Actually, we do know Duke can score; the Blue Devils put up 93 points at Pittsburgh on Nov. 24, and 83 at home against Albany on Dec. 9. But in contests against the toughest foes, Duke is probably not going to win because of its offense.

Instead, the Blue Devils can beat other very good teams by turning the game into something that looks and feels like a stalemate until Duke – or more specifically, guard Jasmine Thomas _ can make a big play late.

That’s what happened Dec. 6 in a 61-58 victory over Texas A&M, when Thomas hit a jumper and two free throws in the final minute. And also against Xavier, when she made the go-ahead free throw with 2 ½ seconds left and then raced to the other end of the court to block a shot by Xavier’s Special Jennings, a spectacular play.

Duke has non-conference games remaining against Temple (Dec. 30), Kentucky (Jan. 4) and then the biggie, Connecticut (Jan. 31). The Blue Devils will try to impose their will against the Owls and Wildcats – and their ACC foes _ and that very often should produce a victory. But not necessarily against the Huskies.

UConn will not be forced into playing Duke’s style, and the Blue Devils show no signs of being able to make enough shots to keep pace with the Huskies. Should UConn’s streak still be going by the time of the Duke game, don’t look for the Blue Devils to have much chance at ending it, especially at Connecticut. (Although … does Jessica Foley have any eligibility left?)

What of Xavier? Tuesday was the first loss this season for the Musketeers, who’ve averaged just 61.8 points now over their last five games. With interior giants Amber Harris and Ta’Shia Phillips – who combined for 34 rebounds against Duke – Xavier is going to cause problems for every foe. But can the Musketeers be balanced enough offensively against the top teams?

Harris’ 22 points, 15 rebounds and six blocked shots vs. the Blue Devils made for an outstanding performance … except for her team-high eight turnovers.

The Musketeers still have another very high-profile trip to take in non-conference play, as they face Stanford on Dec. 28. Those teams, of course, met in the NCAA Elite Eight last season in a game that was utterly excruciating for Xavier, which missed open shots twice near the end only to see Stanford’s Jeanette Pohlen go coast-to-coast for the winning layup.

The Musketeers undoubtedly will be tired of talking about it before they’re even asked the first question, but it might also serve as motivation for them at Maples.

It pained Xavier on Tuesday to come so close against Duke to such a marquee win – on the road, no less _ as that’s something that could definitely help the Musketeers come NCAA tournament selection time. But the loss in Durham may make Xavier more dangerous for Stanford, which will have to focus fully on the Musketeers even though UConn’s Dec. 30 visit looms.

The National Women’s Law Center is sponsoring a “Blog to Rally for Girls’ Sports Day” today, Dec. 8, where they are asking bloggers to write about the value of girls’ and women’s sports and what that means to them.

I write most of the entries on this blog about women’s sports, so on this day, I want to focus on the value of mentors … and the value of appreciating them. And in doing so, I also get to tell you the rest of a story that I wrote recently.
Last week, I did an ESPN.com piece about Nebraska volleyball player Hannah Werth … except what appeared on the site wasn’t quite all of the story that I wanted to tell. I had found myself writing it from two different aspects, but after some editorial discussion, I agreed to focus more on one. That was Hannah’s story as it appeared: her background, the adversity she’s faced, her personality, her current career. Which had been my exact intent when I had started reporting it.

The thing was, during the course of that reporting, another theme became a big part of the narrative, too. I still included that to some extent, but I want to expand on it here. Because in talking with Hannah, her mother, Kim, and one of her mentors, former Florida volleyball standout Jenny Wood Holliday, I thought about how all their stories came together and reflected some universal truths about mentoring.

Kim Schofield Werth grew up the daughter of a major-league baseball player, “Ducky” Schofield. He was an infielder for 19 seasons in the big leagues. Springfield, Ill., was the family’s home base, but Kim also traveled to wherever her dad played ball. One of the things Kim recalled to me was the intoxicating rush it was to be someplace like Boston’s Fenway Park and see her dad hit a ball off the Green Monster.

“I thought I was going to explode. It was just pure adrenaline,” she said. “And I would get that feeling every time I raced on the playground.”

She wasn’t cut out to just be a spectator. Track was Kim’s sport, specifically long jump and sprints, and Title IX was passed between her freshman and sophomore years of high school. She was part of the generation of girl athletes who hadn’t gotten very much, if any, social approval to compete, but still did it anyway. Then they found themselves at the transformative start of women’s college athletics as we know them today.

“We went to a meeting to bring more sports to our school after Title IX,” Kim said. “The only things we had then were field hockey and cheerleading, and I can tell you field hockey was not my favorite sport. But I loved AAU track. By the time I had my first state track meet in high school, I had already been in AAU national meets.

“Especially growing up, it was hard because people weren’t kind. They would say, ‘What are you ever going to do with this?’ And I would say, ‘Why is this wrong?’ Their opposition just never made any sense to me. I never understood why people thought it was weird. It was all about motivation and doing things that made you feel good about yourself.”

It occurred to her, though, that the people who would say belittling things about girls in sports probably were not unlike the idiots who went to baseball games and screamed at players. She’d heard that pretty much all her life, so figured it really wasn’t anything new to deal with.

Besides, there was someone who really did understand her drive and desire. He was among the finest athletes to ever come out of central Illinois: Springfield’s “Rocket” Ray Ramsey, a three-sport star at Bradley University in the 1940s who went on to play in both the NFL and NBA.

After his diverse career as a pro athlete ended, he became a high school coach for three decades and also ran a local track program that included his own daughters and Kim. Certainly, not every kid he impacted had the kind of talent and goals that someone like Kim did. But that’s the thing about great mentors: They can help everyone from the kid for whom just finishing a race is a triumph to the kid whose ambition burns incessantly.

“He was the most awesome coach,” Kim said of Ramsey, who passed away in 2009. “He was very quiet, but he and I got along great.”

After finishing as a nine-time state champion in high school, Kim went to Iowa State in 1975 to continue her track career. A severe back injury slowed her in the 1976 Olympic trials, and interrupted her college career.

She got married and had son Jayson _ yes, the Jayson Werth who just signed a huge deal with the Washington Nationals _ but the marriage ended and she went back to college at Florida to complete her eligibility. By the time she concluded her college career, she was 26.

“For me, it was finishing what I started,” Kim said of competing at Florida while juggling motherhood. “It was all about meeting my personal goals. When it was over, I was very satisfied. I did what I set out to do.”

And to this day, she credits Ramsey for all the time he spent with her and how much he shaped her life. And that’s the other side to mentorship: gratitude from the person who was mentored. Not ever forgetting the lessons or the teacher. Those were things Kim has passed down to her three children.

Kim married Dennis Werth, a former baseball player, and they had two daughters, Hillary, who ran track at UCLA, and Hannah, whose Nebraska volleyball team will be playing in the NCAA regional semifinals Friday in Seattle.

Hannah spoke with a lot of affection and admiration about how much her parents and older siblings had positively influenced her as an athlete and a person. And others had aided her, too. One in particular. I wondered why Hannah wore No. 44, which is not a common volleyball number, to say the least. It is a tribute to Holliday, who’d worn No. 4 at Florida. That number was already taken at Nebraska – senior Lindsey Licht wears it – so Hannah chose 44.

And this really struck me, because I often grumble to myself about athletes being uninformed about history. Especially female athletes not knowing or appreciating anything about the women competitors who came before them.

Holliday played volleyball at Florida in the mid-1990s; Hannah turned 6 during her senior season. So she’s too young to have seen anything of Holliday’s college career – played far from their shared hometown of Springfield, Ill., _ while it was ongoing. However, Hannah took the time to learn about it and decided to honor Holliday. I thought, “Jenny must have had a big impact on the kid.”

But then when I talked to Holliday, she made it sound like it was the other way around: the kid had a big impact on her. She had walked into a gym, saw this junior-high player ranging all over the court, and immediately recognized she was a Division I-bound athlete. So Holliday found Kim right after the match and said, “Look, you don’t know me, but I just watched your daughter, and she’s got it. She needs to be in club volleyball.”

Holliday then helped them start that process, including coaching one of the early club teams Hannah played on. Holliday downplays her impact, claiming she just saw what anybody who knew volleyball would have seen.

“I’d been coached by some of the best coaches in the nation and I always want to try to give back,” Holliday said. “I sure didn’t have to do much with Hannah, I’ll tell you that. I coached her just a little bit, and took her to a national tryout so other coaches could see her. And after that, she was on her way.”

But you can be sure she did plenty. However, what if Holliday had been too busy or pre-occupied to really notice? Or what if she’d thought, “Well, I don’t even know this kid … should I really say something to her mother?”

Would Hannah have found her way to club volleyball and eventually made it to playing in college? Very likely; she was too good not to. But who can know for sure? This much, though, is certain: Holliday made it easier. And that what mentors do. They are guiding lights along a path on which youngsters, uncertain of the journey, are finding their way.

Mentors can’t do it for you, but they can show you how.

“When you see a young person who you can tell has the desire that you did, you want to embrace that person,” Holliday said. “You say, ‘I want to do whatever I can to help you. I want to fuel your fire.’”

Holliday laughs as she explains her father had promised to buy her a car if she could get a Division I scholarship. She was in fifth grade at the time.

“So I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I knew my goals,” she said. “And that’s the kind of mindset Hannah had, too. She wanted to be the best she could be. She wasn’t your average kid. She didn’t care who said what at school, or who was going to what party, or what anybody was doing on the weekend. She was just focused on what she wanted to do and how she could get better.”

But Holliday also knew that such an attitude can be misconstrued by peers. And she remembered what it felt like to be in those shoes in high school: to deal with jealousy and cold shoulders and snide comments. To have people trying to subtly or not-so-subtly undermine you. Especially if you are a girl.

In fact, I would suspect many of the female athletes who make it to Division I in any sport deal with this to some degree. Some might navigate the mean melodrama of high school more deftly than others, but mentors _ along with parents, who themselves are mentors _ can be a crucial help to all of them. Because they need someone who listens and will say, “You are on the right road. It’s hard, but you can do it. I’ve been there, and I’ve got your back.”

And you really know you’ve done well as a mentor when you see the mentoring torch being passed.

“When Hannah comes home on break, she’ll come over to my club practices and jump right in and help these girls,” Holliday said. “They are just in awe of her, and she’s so good with them, trying to build their confidence.”

One of those kids might be wearing 44 in college someday because of that. She won’t have any idea who “Rocket” Ray Ramsey is or that he had the slightest thing to do with it. And that’s the most amazing thing of all about mentorship: It’s the ripple effect that never dies, reaching places you couldn’t imagine.