Her Own Race for a Cure

Pickett is running strong.Tod Pickett

She had undergone a mastectomy only five months earlier, and the ongoing chemotherapy had left her as bald as Michael Jordan, but Judy Pickett was staying plenty active. In addition to taking care of her three young sons, she was taking aerobics classes three days a week at a gym. Still, the former triathlete star was looking to push herself harder, so she entered a five-kilometer race promoting breast cancer awareness. She donned a pink cap, ignored repeated bouts of nausea and finished in a respectable 23 minutes.

Since that October 1997 day, the 35-year-old Pickett has chosen to cope with breast cancer by staying on the run. In Washington, D.C., this summer, she was 261st out of 46,000 finishers (and fifth among the 4,500 breast cancer survivors) in Race for the Cure, a 5K event organized by the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Now she plans to participate in all 98 Race for the Cure 5K's, which are held in 43 states across the U.S.—an endeavor that will likely take her seven years. Despite the grueling schedule, Pickett will never lack for inspiration. "There's a celebration for survivors at each event," she says, "and I've never left one dry-eyed."

Two weeks before the D.C. race, doctors found another cancerous lump, this one under Pickett's arm. The relapse didn't stop her from running the 5K or from making plans to run more. "How many people can say, My wife is my hero?" says her husband, Tod. "The nice thing about these Komen races is they keep adding more of them every year. So I guess Judy will have to live forever."

-- Michael Silver

Summer Jobbed

Now, this would've been an awesome summer job. In April, Georgia Tech point guard and 1998-99 ACC Rookie of the Year Niesha Butler received a message to call Aisha Coley, a Hollywood casting director. Coley had called at the behest of movie producer Spike Lee, who had met Butler in 1997 when she was in the midst of a wildly successful high school basketball career. (A year later she would break the New York City high school scoring mark for boys and girls.) Lee wanted Butler to audition for the lead role opposite Omar Epps in his upcoming film Love and Basketball,a story about the tough choices a girl must make if she wants to continue playing basketball.

The irony of that plot would soon become apparent. In May the NCAA cried foul, citing its rule prohibiting student-athletes from endorsing a commercial product, like a movie. In short, Butler could've been in the movie but only if she wasn't paid (a condition she was happy to accept) and didn't appear in any promotion, such as a poster or a trailer (alas, an impossibility for anyone cast in a prominent role). Crestfallen, Butler took herself out of the running. "People would die for a lead part," says Butler. "I'm just getting over it. Hopefully, something like this'll come along again."

Hopefully, the NCAA will consider amending its rule against athletes endorsing commercial products, perhaps granting special waivers when common sense seems to dictate, as it does in this case. The rule, after all, was intended to prevent student-athletes from exploiting their fame by, say, signing a lucrative shoe contract, not to keep them from pursuing valuable (and unpaid) career experiences they could never get in the classroom.

Despite the setback, don't be surprised if Butler someday does come to a theater near you. "Niesha was in contention for the lead role not only for her basketball skills but for the natural quality and charisma she brought to the character," says the movie's director, Gina Prince-Bythewood. "I look forward to working with her in the future."

-- Trisha Lucey

Ready, Set, Gold?

Beginner's pluck has put Davidson (left) on an Olympic track.Douglas C. Pizac/AP

Last summer Jen Davidson was a 25-year-old former college sprinter nursing a bad case of Olympic fever. Having watched the 1998 Nagano Games, she was determined to participate in the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, which is less than 30 miles from her home in Layton, Utah. There was one problem. "I didn't know what I was going to do," she says. "I can't ski. I can't skate."

Then Davidson heard that tryouts for the U.S. women's bobsled team were to be held in Salt Lake, in preparation for the sport's 2002 Olympic debut. Though she'd never even seen a bobsled in person, Davidson showed up and went through six tests: three sprints (30, 60 and 100 meters), the vertical jump, five consecutive hops with both feet together and a shot put throw (between the legs with two hands, granny style). Her score was good enough to get her to the next round of tryouts.

Three months later she took her first ride, during which she was tossed around all the way down the course ("like a pinball," she says) and neglected her duties as brakeman, causing the sled to overshoot the track and land on a plywood barrier at the bottom. By December, though, Davidson and her partner, driver Jean Racine, took silver in Davidson's first World Cup race, in Salt Lake City. They followed that with three golds and four silvers in the seven remaining Cup races.

Davidson is now a top candidate for a spot on the 2002 U.S. team, all because she answered an ad for a tryout and wrote a check for $20 (the bobsled federation membership fee). "It's probably the best 20 bucks I ever spent," she says.

--Mark Bechtel

 
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