After the Ball

Some athletes adapt to life after the spotlight while others fail to make the adjustment.

By Jeff Pearlman, published on May 01, 2004 - last reviewed on July 09, 2008

Before she gained 100 pounds of unwanted weight, before she jumped from job to job, before she wondered if, at age 29, her life was over, Elaina Oden was a volleyball player.

Scratch that. Elaina Oden was the volleyball player. A two-time Olympian and NCAA champion at the University of the Pacific. A first-team college All-American in 1985 and 1986. A star in the Italian Club League and one of the 10 greatest American women to ever play the sport.

From her early days at Irvine High School in California through her Olympic triumphs, the sport was a way of life. Elaina's older and younger sisters, Kim and Bev, were also collegiate All-Americans and Olympians. Her father, Abe, had starred on his Marine squadron team in the late 1960s and early 1970s. "Volleyball and the Oden name," says Bev, "sort of merged."

For Elaina, the game was her passion as well as her protective cocoon. Need a new pair of sneaks? Volleyball provided. Wanna see the world? Volleyball Express will take you there. Crave that euphoric feeling you get when fans chant your name, line up for autographs and hand you trophy upon trophy? Volleyball. Volleyball. Volleyball. "I never thought about the real world," says Elaina, sighing. "Why would I? It was a great life."

The end came, as it does for everyone from Babe Ruth to Bo Jackson to Tara Lipinski. For some athletes, it's a stallion ride off into the sunset. For Elaina Oden, it was a wounded donkey. Despite five operations on her left knee and reconstructive surgery of her torn anterior cruciate ligament, Oden fought to make the 1996 U.S. Olympic team, eager to win elusive gold (she attained bronze in '92). "I got hurt during competition, and they gave me a choice," she says. "I could stop playing, or I could get a cortisone shot in my knee." It was a no-brainer. Oden took the injection, then struggled to perform at her naturally high level. The Americans, pre-Olympic favorites, placed seventh. "I wanted to keep playing overseas," she says. "But who wants an injured player from a bad team?"

Washed up before her 30th birthday, Oden would lie awake late into the night replaying '96 Olympic moments. "What if I'd hit that ball in," she'd think to herself. "What if I made that block?" Oden thought about leaving volleyball behind but felt unqualified to do anything else. Her friends were well adjusted in corporate America. At age 29, did she really want to start at the bottom, answering phones or sorting mail? Hell, she was an Olympian.

During the ensuing half-decade Oden took a series of assistant-coaching jobs, jumping from a California club team to Notre Dame to Indiana. "I was miserable and depressed," she says. "When you're an assistant coach, there's no glory. You're useless. I felt all alone."

What Oden didn't realize was that she was far from a solo act. In the worlds of amateur and professional sports, myriads have been fortunate enough to enjoy the perks of athletic greatness. And in the end, myriads have also taken the long, hard fall.

It is an inevitability for most jocks, but few are prepared to cope with the realities of traffic jams and broken appliances, mounting bills and screaming kids. The modern American athlete resides in a million-dollar fantasy world where groupies stand outside hotel room doors in lace teddies and G-strings; where clubhouse kids fetch everything from socks to cigarettes; where people wait for five hours in a pouring rainstorm for an autograph or simply a quick nod. Many do not survive the ego-crushing trip back to reality.

"Because they've been so focused on sports from an early age, many athletes never develop necessary parts of the self," observes Cristina Versari, head of sports psychology at San Diego University for Integrative Studies. "There's a developmental arrest. When an athlete retires, it takes four to eight years to adjust to a new life."

After years running the National Basketball Association's Education and Career Development Program, Versari came across more than 400 basketball players, few of whom were ready for retirement. "Most of us spend 25 to 30 years doing a job that we've prepared for, and that becomes our reason to get up each day," she says. "The professional athlete retires in his late 20s or early 30s and then has no idea what to do. You can only play so much golf."

Pick a sport—any sport—and it's easier to find 10 athletes who failed to make post-retirement life meaningful than 10 who instantly thrived. From former Houston Astros ace J.R. Richard, found living under a bridge, to former world-class sprinter Houston McTear, slumming on the streets of Sweden; from the drug problems of Mets slugger Darryl Strawberry to the AIDS-related death of one-time Padres second baseman Alan Wiggins, the sporting world offers a Who's Who of casualty tales.