This is actually what I was coming here to write when I came across the news of Karch Kiraly’s hire. You want a hardened veteran of USA Women’s Volleyball, you’re looking at her.
With the possible, and I stress possible, exception of Kerri Walsh Jennings, there is no one better to take the title of ‘First Lady of American Volleyball’ than Logan Tom. She has done it all (well…not all…and we’ll get to that), and left a trail of devastation behind her.
Logan Tom was born May 25, 1981, the daughter of former NFL lineman Mel Tom. She grew up in Utah with her mother and older brother, graduating Highland High School in Salt Lake City, Utah as the state record holder for kills and service aces for a career after four years as a once-in-a-generation talent at outside hitter. Her parents divorced when she was young, so she spent her summers in her father’s native Hawaii. She also competed in basketball (naturally, for such a tall girl) and track and field as a high schooler, earning All-State honors in hoops and a state third-place finish in the javelin throw as a senior. She also graduated top of her class with a perfect 4.00 GPA. Don’t you just hate people like this? (Just kidding Logan, we love you) Sadly, Mel Tom died of heart failure in 2006, getting to see his daughter compete in the Olympics but not seeing her win a medal.
The next stop was Stanford University, but where for most players this would be a four-year layover before any bigger things, for Tom the path was more crooked. Along with that other great lady of USA volleyball I mentioned, Kerri Walsh (who is three years older than Tom; she was a senior when Tom was a freshman), Tom and the Cardinal rolled to the national championship match. They were soundly beaten there by up-and-coming juggernaut Penn State (by a goofy-looking score of 15-2, 15-10, 15-7….remember this was sideout scoring at the time) but were still pretty undeniably the #2 team in the world.
The next season for the Cardinal was a bit more lean. They were of course expecting to lose Walsh to the national team, but I bet they never imagined Tom would go with her. She was the only collegian to play in the 2000 Olympic tournament in Sydney, and is the only woman in the history of Stanford athletics to appear in the Olympics and then return to play for Stanford. The team finished just out of the medals, losing the bronze medal final to archnemesis Brazil as former powerhouse Cuba (shocking how far they’ve fallen in so short a time) and Russia took gold and silver, respectively. Tom did return to play for Stanford in 2000, but after missing her for a month and a half of the season Tom’s Cardinal were not major contenders in the NCAA tournament. And indeed, they bowed out in the second round with a 3-2 loss to UCSB.
Then came the next top of the mountain — 2001. Tom’s seasonal honors, like All-American awards and Player of the Year titles, could fill an entire paragraph. The Cardinal entered the NCAA tournament as easy Pac-10 champions, carrying the #3 seed (The NCAA volleyball tournament, even now, is a bit screwy. It has 64 teams in a bracket not terribly unlike the much better known NCAA basketball tournament, but only the top 16 are seeded, and the seeds are for the whole tournament, not just one region. The other 48 teams are unseeded). Playing under glorious new rally scoring, the team dropped just a single game before their showdown with undefeated #1 overall seed Long Beach State in the national championship match. Tom was the star of the first game (as what we now call sets were then known), staving off a 49er game point with a kill and then securing the first game for the Cardinal with another a couple of points later. Then in the third game, Tom got another big kill to give Stanford national championship point, winning the match with a block double on the next point. For her successes, she was named the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player.
Tom’s college career didn’t quite have a storybook ending, as the bid for two straight national titles came up one match short the following season. But it still more than lives up the immense high standard Stanford University has always set for its athletics and for collegiate volleyball in the state of California. She never actually graduated from Stanford, but as someone who’s grown quite disillusioned with college I will say firmly that I can’t blame her for cutting and running with such green pastures awaiting her.
The 2004 Olympic cycle was probably always one too soon for the American ladies, as they finished a distant fifth in Athens, but a bronze medal finish at the 2007 World Cup put them in strong position for Beijing. They entered the tournament as medal favorites and gold medal contenders. They dropped one match in pool play, to Cuba, and were tested in the knockout stage by Italy, but they ultimately made it to the gold medal final against that old nemesis Brazil. The American girls pulled out the second set, but that was all, settling for silver.
In between stints with the national team, Tom has played professionally in Russia, Italy, Brazil, Switzerland, and Spain, as well as Japan and Turkey. She has also dabbled with beach volleyball (and the photographic proof of that is all right by me), but was never terribly successful. She played 25 AVP tournaments in the summers of 2006 and 2007, only finishing above fifth one time (a gold medal final loss with Holly McPeak in 2007). She’s said that she thinks of beach and indoor volleyball as two entirely different sports that simply have a similar name, and there’s some merit to that. Teaming with McPeak, Brittany Hochevar, Nancy Reynolds, Dianne DeNecochea, and Brooke Niles, all of them except DeNecochea shorter than her, Tom probably had to do far more setting playing the beach game than she would have ever dreamed of doing indoors. Kerri Walsh is a rare breed of cat playing both indoor and beach at the Olympic level and Karch Kiraly is a certified freak of nature being wildly successful at both. It doesn’t surprise me that Tom hasn’t returned to the beach since 2007.
I said at the top that there was one thing Tom still hasn’t done, and that’s win Olympic gold. Things were looking good for Logan and the American squad, dispatching Brazil with ease in the group stage in London. They along with Russia were the only teams to win all their matches in the group stage. Since Russia was forced to a fifth set once while the United States won all their matches in four or fewer, the Americans got the best draw for the knockout stage. And it was looking pretty good at first, with easy three-set wins against the Dominican Republic and South Korea to advance to the gold medal final once again.
But of course who was waiting for them, but old friends Brazil.
It was a match very much like four years prior, in actual fact. The Americans comfortably won the first set (25-11), but it was like a switch was flipped at that very moment, and they were not particularly competitive in any of the remaining sets (17-25, 20-25, 17-25). The gold went to Brazil once again.
Despite an amazing resume and being a veteran of four Olympic Games, Logan Tom is still just 31 years old. It’s not even a question of if she’ll be back to try again in Rio. I wouldn’t really be surprised if she hung on for a sixth Olympic cycle four years hence (though a shiny golden reason to retire would be nice, too). But she won’t be around forever. Players of Logan Tom’s caliber don’t come along too often (though Destinee Hooker is looking like a very nice heir apparent), so enjoy her in international play while you still can.
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