Sean P. Murray - If Gold Is Our Destiny: How a Team of Mavericks Came Together for Olympic Glory

Sean Murray is the founder of RealTime Performance, a consultancy dedicated to help ing organizations develop leaders and build high-performing cultures. He also hosts The Good Life Podcast and writes regularly at the RealTime Performance Blog. Sean delivers workshops, courses, and keynote speeches on leadership, team building, and how to create a high-performing culture. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.

To learn more about introducing the timeless principles of leadership and team success to your organization, visit www.realtimeperformance.com.

I could not have written this book without the unwavering support of my wife, Francine, who believed in me, and this project, from the very beginning. Writing the book was a five-year journey, and there were several times when I was ready to give up, but each time, it was her encouragement and confidence in me and the story that brought me back and kept me going.

The book would, of course, not be possible without my father and his decades-long involvement and dedication to U.S. mens volleyball. The friendships he formed and the incredible work he did with his partner, Chuck Johnson, and the coaches and administrators at USA Volleyball are a testament to the power of the team principles that ultimately played out in the gold medal victory of the 1984 team.

I would like to thank my mother, who is a gifted writer and showed me with her example how the power of words on a page can move the hearts and minds of others. Growing up, she encouraged me to write and follow my dreams. She always cherished the time she got to spend traveling with the team in Japan in 1982, and she became one of its biggest fans at the 1984 Olympics. When my father passed away in May 2021, she inspired me to finish the project and ensure the incredible story of the 1984 team would live on.

I couldnt have written the book without the help of Doug Beal. When I called him in June 2017 and briefed him on my intention to write a book about the 1984 team, he was supportive of the project, making himself available for countless phone interviews and email exchanges. He introduced me to the players, coaches, and just about anyone who had played even a minor role in helping the 1984 team be successful. He invited me into his home and opened his personal archives, over twenty boxes of articles, pictures, and clippings from his long and distinguished career. His generosity and enthusiasm for the project were instrumental in helping me overcome the many roadblocks and challenges along the way.

Bill Neville is one of the all-time great storytellers of volleyball, and he was a huge help. What came across most with Bill was how much he cared about the boys on the 1984 team and how proud he was of the men they became. He was very generous with his time, sitting for several long interviews and many follow-up conversations and emails.

Blaine Harden met with me over a beer one nightanother aspiring writer asking adviceand very generously provided a roadmap for how to write a book and get it published. His support of my early drafts gave this project a jolt of energy when it almost didnt get off the ground.

Lisa Shannon helped me improve the book proposal and shop it to potential agents, and Scott Bedbury read an early chapter and encouraged me to keep going. Brent Snow was a sounding board throughout the project, helping me find my way when I got lost.

Amarjit Chopra read several early drafts of the book and provided detailed notes and feedback. His mentorship was invaluable.

Im especially grateful for my agent, Leah Spiro, who took a chance on an unknown and unpublished writer. She had faith in me and the story and has been an unwavering champion for the book.

Im forever indebted to Glenn Stout, who took a rough and unpolished draft of the book and worked with me, tirelessly, word by word and sentence by sentence, helping me transform the manuscript into something worthy of the subject. His professionalism and dedication to the craft of writing was both inspiring and motivating to a writer trying to navigate my way through my first book.

My editor, Christen Karniski, recognized the potential in the story and saw enough promise in my early drafts to back this project and run with it. Thank you to Erinn Slanina, for her detailed work and persistence and keeping the project moving, and to my publisher, Rowman & Littlefield, and everyone on the team there, for having faith in a first-time author creating a beautiful book.

And finally, I want to acknowledge and thank my children, Will and Annie. More than a few times, in the past five years, I missed out on spending time with them because of the book, but they understood and always kept a smile on their faces. As my parents passed down the lessons of life to me and my siblings, my wife and I try to do the same with our children, and I hope this story becomes a part of that knowledgethat their grandfather was part of something special and left the world a little better than he found itsomething we can all aspire to achieve.

I n the fall of 1982, the U.S. mens national volleyball team boarded a military transport plane in Buenos Aires. As they walked across the tarmac and ascended the stairs into the cabin, they got a good look at the well-worn fuselage and prop engines. The plane looked to the players to be something right out of a World War II movie. With baggage piled up in the aisles, the already tight quarters became cramped. All of this might not have been so concerning for the players if they werent so tired. They had been traveling for over twenty-four hours, with almost no sleep, and they were still 700 miles from their destination.

Their first match was in Catamarca, a regional agricultural town nestled near the foothills of the Andes, one of several cities across Argentina hosting matches for the Volleyball World Championships that year. For reasons that were never clearly explained to the coaches, the plane landed well-short of the final destination. Blurry-eyed and jetlagged, the players disembarked and were promptly ushered into a dusty old, converted school bus. They took one look at the bus and shook their heads in disbelief. Assistant coach Bill Neville verbalized what they were all thinking. Complaining is not going to do any good here boys. Just get in and get some sleep.

Again, the luggage was piled in the aisles and the players, most of whom were well over six feet tall, squeezed into their seats for what became a seven-hour drive, over dirt roads and through the mountains, to Catamarca.

Their coach, Doug Beal, liked to claim one of the strengths of this team was the ability to sleep in any condition, under any situation, in any cramped quarters. True to form, the players shifted luggage and twisted their frames until the conditions were just comfortable enough to find sleep.

The bumpy road to Catamarca was rough, but these players had endured worse, much worse. The previous summer they had left their home base in San Diego on June 22, flew to Asia, and didnt return to the United States until August 2. During those six weeks, spanning the hottest days of summer, they endured planes, trains, and buses from Shanghai to Seoul and all over Japan.

Beal, on the other hand, never could sleep on buses, so he found a seat in the front with the local interpreter on one side and the bus driver on the other. The interpreter offered Beal yerba mate tea, a traditional indigenous drink of Argentina. Having nothing else to drink, Beal took him up on the offer. First one cup, then another; before long he had downed five cups. Drinking tea from the caffeine-rich yerba mate plant, it has been written, raises morale, sustains the muscular system, augments strength and allows one to endure privations. In a word, it is a valiant aid. Beal was going to need every ounce of valiant aid he could get over the next two weeks. His team of young Americans would soon face off against the Soviet Union mens volleyball team, the biggest, baddest, most dominant volleyball players on the planet.