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By Cindy Lin, BASOC Volunteer
A competitive swimmer from age five, Orinda native Heather Petri got her start in water polo as a sophomore in high school, when childhood swim pals invited her to join them on the Miramonte High School boys' team. Petri helped start a girls' water polo team at her school the following year, and became a top defender for UC Berkeley (Cal). At the debut of women's water polo in Sydney, Petri won a silver medal playing two-meter defense for the United States.
How did you like being part of an inaugural Olympic sport?
That was awesome. [Women's water polo] has been a sport where [the athletes] have been struggling for so long. Only recently did they have varsity teams in college, and even when I was in high school we didn't have a team. To finally have it at the Olympic level shows how much it's growing.
What do you remember most about your Olympic experience?
I loved the [athletes] village! I thought that was amazing. I'd never realized that all the athletes were together. You have your houses and streets, and each street had a country on it, so our street was the United States, but you'd walk down another street and there's Thailand or Cuba. They had this gigantic dining hall the size of a football field, and there's people eating every type of food you can imagine and intermingling. It was amazing. It was kind of like the world was compacted into a microcosm of what the world is like - only everyone is happy and really excited to meet each other.
Where do you keep your medal?
Ha, everyone always asks me that. In my underwear drawer. But don't tell anyone that!
What's next for you in the sport and beyond?
I just graduated from Cal in May with a degree in biology. I took a year off from school and playing for Cal to go down to LA and train for the Olympic Games.
Right now I'm competing again -- it's about two years out from the [next] Olympic Games. So in a year and a half we'll start full-time training again, which takes up a lot of time. I'll be moving to LA in September for training. That's where the team is centralized.
My goal is to make it to Athens and play there. After that, I'm not really sure. At this level of water polo, I feel like I have a lot of years left in me!
Why is the San Francisco Bay Area the perfect host for the Olympics Games?
It reminds me a lot of Sydney -- that's what I felt like when I went there, that Sydney was home. And I think the Sydney Olympics were probably the best I'd ever seen.
I think it has something for everyone. There are so many parts to not just San Francisco, but the surrounding areas. I feel like anyone from any country could come here and feel at home, or find something that they enjoyed. I just love the area.
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