I took down the information and Jeannie’s phone number on a small sheet of paper, and stuck it to my office bulletin board while I considered what to do with it. I knew nothing about the sport, and doubted that anyone else did as well. ‘Who would care?’ I thought.
But I wrote a tiny sports brief on her accomplishment. Through the years after that, I soon I found myself writing more articles about that little girl.
Well, as you may have seen on Tuesday, a lot of people now care about the sport of judo. That little girl grew up to be Olympic gold medalist Kayla Harrison.
Kayla has come a long way through her days as a shy little blonde-haired kid who was just trying to follow her mom’s footsteps at the Renshuden Judo Academy in Springboro, to her days as a world champion creating footsteps for others to follow.
Jeannie would call me from all over the country after Kayla would win a junior or national event.
Then, after the stunning news that her previous coach had been charged with sexual battery against Kayla, she began training at former Olympian Jimmy Pedro’s USA Judo National Team FORCE in Wakefield, Mass.
Harrison charged through the junior ranks and made a name for herself right away. Five junior division golds in 2003. Two more golds at the Pan American Infantile Championships and the Junior U.S. Open in 2004. Seven more gold medals in junior competitions in 2005 and five more gold medals the following year.
In 2006, she won the Pan American junior title. Then just a week later, she stepped up a weight class and won the U.S. Senior national title. I think she won every junior event she competed in from 2005 to 2008. She’d earned junior national rankings in seven different weight classes since 2003.
Kayla, now bulked up with rigorous training in order to match up with the world’s best, went to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games as a sparring partner for Ronda Rousey, who won bronze that year.
Kayla and I once did an interview while she was sitting in a remote Argentinian island airport. To save her phone bill, she and I both logged onto Facebook and used the chat window to do the entire interview.
She won the junior world championship in 2008 and was second in 2009.
In 2010, after she’d won the senior world championship in Tokyo, to take her place atop the world rankings, Kayla took time out from her international interviews to have a Skype session interview.
A few months before the London Olympic Games, Kayla was back home visiting her family. During one of her workouts at Middletown High School, she took time to show my son, Drew, some moves on the mat. She even let him flip her. (Drew now brags to his school buddies that he once flipped the Olympic gold medalist.)
On the day of her Olympic matches, and while dutifully wearing our “Team Kayla” shirts, Drew and I were up early in the morning to follow each match over the Internet as they transpired live.
Jeannie relayed text messages to me from London shortly after Kayla won the gold medal match. My family and all of Middletown have been celebrating ever since.
It’s been fun witnessing one young woman’s rise to the top since that late-night phone call from a proud mom 14 years ago.
About the Author