Saving The Spirit by David Fleming Sick of the Dream Team yet? Tired of hearing guys like millionaire Carl Lewis whine about getting a tenth gold then leaving his ninth medal in an NBC limo? How about spoiled baby Linford Christie, potty mouth Andre Agassi or that Ice Capades show put on by the gymnastics teams the other night? Had just about enough of the petulant, quasi-amateur athletes hogging the spotlight? Well, me too. What we all need at this point is a good dose of athletes like U.S. field hockey goalie Patty Shea. Simply for the honor of being pelted with something slightly harder than a baseball while representing her country in the Olympics, Shea, 33, has, in no particular order, been away from her friends, her dog Bailey and her family of 12 for more than a year, given up her coaching job of seven years at the University of Iowa and the 401(K) plan and health benefits that go along with it and suffered through one experimental knee surgery and, oh, a DOZEN other procedures on her right knee leaving the joint looking like the terrain of a double black diamond mogul run. Even though her 13 surgeries are the most of any American athlete, you'd still have to pry the Olympic-sized smile off her face with a crowbar. Gutsy goalie Patty Shea "The Olympics are the ultimate for true amateur athletes, because you know in your heart that for once you are equal to all other athletes, even the superstars," says Shea. "We are all, for two weeks every four years, on the same level: The highest level any athlete, superhero or field hockey player, can be at. I don't have a single regret about anything I've given up because there is no amount of money that can compare to the experience of playing in the Olympics. It was the highlight of my career and you can't trade those kinds of memories for all the money in the world. As athletes we already walk around on a gold mine. You wanna find people to feel sorry for, walk around the streets and shelters of Atlanta sometime." Although the U.S. team entered the Olympics with hopes for a medal after taking the bronze at the 1994 world championships in Ireland, Shea and Co. won just a single game in their last five matches in Atlanta. They did manage to rally and beat Spain in the finale and finish fifth, ensuring the squad a place in next year's Champions Cup--the Super Bowl of field hockey. But Shea, a native of Belmont, Mass. and a graduate of UMass, won't be playing at the Champions Cup. Because as of right now, sitting at the VIP tent inside Coke City, she is officially retired, looking at graduate schools, perhaps a personal loan and, thankfully, burning her knee braces. "Knock on wood," she says, rubbing her bumpy right knee under the table. "I'm ready to call it a career. I've helped lift my sport to another level--that makes me feel really proud--and now it's time for me to help out in other ways, maybe teaching kids how to play or something like that." If she passes on an ounce of her spirit, talent or grit the U.S. field hockey program may be headed for gold in 2000. Her first knee `scope was in 1987, a year later during a pickup game in Boston, Shea blew the joint out completely. She planted her right foot on the AstroTurf at full speed but when she rotated to snag a deflected ball, the sideways torque disintegrated her anterior cruciate ligament while straining her medial and lateral ligaments. "It was like an explosion in my knee," says Shea who crumpled to the turf in the white hot pain associated with an injury that keeps most NFL players out for at least a year. Shea played in the Seoul Olympics two months later. To do that she researched and then requested a synthetic implant, rather than the transplanted tendon usually used. It was a procedure that hadn't been granted approval by the FDA and one that Shea knew would lead to another three hour reconstructive surgery after the Games, if the first one even worked. She signed a multitude of waivers and had the surgery. The graph took but caused cysts to grow in the joint sending her back for five more painful operations before the Games, where the U.S. finished eighth. "At that time I thought `88 was my only shot at the Olympics," she says. "No way was anything getting in the way of my dream." After 13 knee operations and two Olympics, Shea is ready to call it quits. As she recounts her second reconstruction in 1992 and the five subsequent scopes to clean up torn meniscus, you realize that somewhere across town, a guy like Charles Barkley is threatening to boycott the gold medal game because room service forgot to crack his lobster tails before opening the Dom Perignon. Shea has never tasted the stuff--not even after being named the 1988 U.S. Field Hockey Association's athlete of the year--and probably never will, having wiped out her savings while training the last year in Atlanta. "Hey if I can feed my dog and pay my mortgage, I'm fine," says Shea, smiling as she adjusts the field-hockey-playing Izzy medallion dangling from her neckless. "Money doesn't measure up to the memories I'll have. Do you know what it's like to march in an opening ceremony in your own country? It's like a tiny piece of everyone in America is there walking around that track with you. It feels like the whole world is cheering for you." In a perfect world, at a dream Olympics, that would be enough of a reward for everyone. photographs by David Fleming

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