[ IN FOCUS ]
Matt Biondi won eight Olympic gold medals and now he's found a new calling as swimming coach at Parker School on the Big Island. The former Cal swimmer was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame on Thursday.
Bonding with Biondi
Olympic Hall of Fame swimmer finds
a new home and new life in Hawaii
KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii » Olympic gold medalist Matt Biondi has a good excuse for missing the summer Games for the first time in 20 years.
Biondi has a busy summer ahead before returning to teach math and coach the swim team at Parker School in Waimea on the Big Island.
There were plans to take his wife and two sons camping. He also made a stop in Chicago on Thursday to be inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.
During his swimming career, Biondi, 38, won 11 medals -- eight gold, two silver and a bronze -- in three summer Olympics, retiring after the 1992 Olympics as the most decorated U.S. Olympian ever, tied with swimmer Mark Spitz.
Biondi then devoted much of his time to marine mammal conservation and delivering motivational speeches. But after several years and dozens of speeches, he grew bored and sought a new challenge.
After earning earned a master's degree in teaching in 2000 from Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, Biondi looked to start a new career.
Hawaii was on the short list for Biondi and his wife, Kristin, who grew up on Oahu. The couple have two sons, Nate, 5, and Lucas, who turns 2 later this year.
Biondi applied for a social studies teaching position at Parker School, but the slot had been filled. Then-headmaster Peiper Toyama found Biondi a position teaching math at the independent middle and high school.
As the family settled into life on the Big Island, Biondi developed his motivational speech into a personal excellence course.
"We all face the same struggles and demons," he said. "And we associate failure with a negative and defeatist result. Young people tend to think of failure as the end."
Instead, Biondi stresses failure as an opportunity in the drive for success.
For more than two decades, Biondi -- who earned 17 U.S. National Championships, 13 NCAA Championships and capped his time at the University of California at Berkeley with three NCAA National Water Polo Championships -- put in hour after hour at the pool, using one stroke at a time to build something memorable.
"I did that extremely well," he said. "It added up to something pretty impressive. And I am humbled by it."
He uses his failures and successes as examples for his students, telling them of the skinny kid who was devastated when he missed a turn during a junior national race and of the times he just did not want to practice.
Biondi started the swim team this year at Parker School with three athletes -- freshman Zac Nealy, and juniors John Hamilton and Nicki Patton.
The school has no pool of its own, so the coach and his team drove 20 minutes to the community facility in Honokaa three times a week.
They ended the season with a series of personal milestones and appearances in the Hawaii High School Athletic Association state tournament in May on Maui.
"We looked at the state times and we were miles off, literally," he said. "At the start of the season, we were tired, weak and slow.
"They worked through those days when there didn't seem to be a pay off," he said. "It is so fun for me, the joy they felt (when they began to see improvements)."
On the last day of the season, Patton qualified for the state meet. Her success jump-started Hamilton, who then qualified in two events, Biondi said.
Nealy set himself a goal of 1 minute in the 100-yard freestyle event, more than 12 seconds off the state's fastest times. At the last meet, Nealy looked at his time -- 59.6 seconds.
"He jumped up in the water and yelled out such a joyous yell," Biondi said. "He was a different person after that."
Biondi said he sees potential in several of the younger students.
"They are entering seventh grade this year and I'm kind of licking my chops," he said. "It will only take one swimmer to bring such pride to our school."
As for the world's biggest swim meet this summer, Biondi declined to make any predictions. "I haven't done my homework on that," he said, "but I'll be watching."
This year's U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame class also includes swimmer Janet Evans, speedskaters Bonnie Blair and Dan Jansen, track and field athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee, late track and field star Florence Griffith Joyner and the 1996 women's soccer team.
Voting for the Class of 2004 was divided among U.S. Olympians, select U.S. Olympic family and media and, for the first time, online fans.
