Catching Up With ...
        1964 and 1968 Olympic Track Trialist Ginny Husted (June 22)
        SPU Athletic Trainers (June 29)
        Two-time NCAA soccer champion Peter Hattrup (July 6)
        New assistant volleyball coach Whitney  Dibble (July 13)
        Distance runner Lisa Anderberg teaching in Laos (July 20)

SEATTLE – The noise. The cheers. The sheer volume of it all.
 
Ask Lorna Griffin about competing for the United States in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, and she'll share a tale or two, whether it was the “pretty awesome” experience of the opening ceremonies, or actually getting to compete.
                                                                                                                   
But what really stood out in the mind of the world-class track and field thrower from Seattle Pacific?
                                            
The noise. The cheers.
 
The sheer volume of it all.
 
“It was overwhelming to me to have such a big crowd – I'd never had that before,” Griffin recalled. “Well, maybe a little bit in Eugene, Oregon. But I had never experienced anything like that.

Starting tonight and for the next 16 days, more than 10,000 Olympic athletes representing 203 nations will compete in London. Griffin, now 56 and living in Huntington Beach, Calif., where she is a massage therapist while also coaching at Santiago Canyon Community College, will keep up with the action from afar.
 
“Olympic years always bring those memories back up, and it is so fun to feel the excitement of the Olympic Games and watch the great athletes who make up the Olympic teams,” said Griffin, now 56.
 
But even thousands of miles removed, she has a five-ringed perspective that most fans – and even most athletes – won't ever experience.
 
 “They filled the capacity of the (L.A.) Coliseum – 100,000-plus all chanting, 'U-S-A, U-S-A,' ” Griffin said.
 
“And you're in the spotlight.”
 
BEFORE FALCONS, THERE WAS FARMING
Talent. Work ethic. Each of those Olympians in tonight's parade of athletes possesses plenty of both. So too did Griffin.
 
But her specialty also required some sheer strength, and Griffin, born in Hamilton, Mont., came by it naturally during her childhood days.
 
“I grew up on a dairy farm, so I had to do a lot of physical labor,” she said.
 
Added legendary former Seattle Pacific head coach Ken Foreman, “Lorna was proud of the fact that her father always told people, 'My daughter Lorna does as much work on this farm as any of the men.' ”

Though Griffin ultimately became a world-caliber performer in both the shot put and discus (9^th in the shot, 12^th in the disc at those '84 Olympics), it was the discus with which she became most closely associated.
 
“That was my favorite, and I probably put more emphasis on the discus,” Griffin said. “It was a challenge at first – maybe that's why I liked it. I would throw and throw and throw and try to learn how to do it.”
 
While at Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell, Mont., Griffin won the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women national title in 1976. (The AIAW was the primary sponsor of women's national championships prior to the NCAA assuming that role in the 1980s.)  It was then that she caught Foreman's attention.
 
“At that time, we had two great throwers (Julia Hansen and Marcia Mecklenburg), or, at least we had their commitment to attend SPU,” Foreman said, “so I did not attempt to recruit Lorna … until she won the discus event at the AIAW meet.
 
“When you can recruit a national champion who wants to join the best collegiate throwers,” Foreman continued, “you find a way to do so.”
 
Griffin made her mark – and then some – with the Falcons in 1977 and '78. She still owns the school discus record of 180 feet, 3 inches, and is No. 2 on SPU's all-time shot put list at 49-9¾, trailing only Mecklenberg's 52-1. Her second-place finish in the discus (164-5) helped the Falcons take seventh as a team at the AIAW nationals in 1977. She was third in 1978 at 163-4.
 
“Looking back on it, (the other Falcon throwers) probably challenged me and made me a better thrower than I was,” Griffin said, “and I think they probably would say the same thing. We pushed each other.”
 
THE OLYMPICS THAT WEREN'T
For all the special moments of competing in the Los Angeles Olympics, Griffin earned her first U.S. Olympic team berth for the 1980 Moscow Games.
 
But she never got to go after President Jimmy Carter ordered a boycott to protest the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.
 
The controversial decision generated plenty of strong opinions on both sides of the story. Even within the community of athletes, some agreed; others did not.
 
Griffin was among those who did not.
 
“It was a heartbreak,” she said. “I didn't really see the reasoning behind it. The Russians were in Afghanistan, and they were there after the Olympics, so it didn't make any difference. We got punished for something that shouldn't have been political.”

Undeterred, Griffin kept at it and made the 1984 U.S. team – winning the shot put trials, but grabbing the third and last spot in the discus after being forced to use a standing throw because of a torn calf muscle suffered three weeks earlier.
 
“I was lucky that I was able to make it back and get onto another team. A lot of people didn't,” she said. “It's a small opportunity of time that you have.
 
“But I do believe that my discus was at my best in 1980. I was making a lot of American records. If I had the experience of going to the Olympics and competing, I might have thrown all right for myself.”
 
Griffin figured she'd go for the discus again in 1988 and did make the U.S. trials. But some nerve damage on her right (throwing) arm hindered her performance, and she fell short of Seoul, deciding then that it was time to step aside.
 
“I thought my ego wasn't going to put up with seeing my distance go lower and lower,” she said.
 
“It was probably the biggest highlights of my life to make the Olympic team twice. And it always makes me thankful that God gave me the talent and blessing of making two Olympic teams.”
 
IDLE NOT HER STYLE
Griffin learned to play volleyball and competed recreationally for several years “because I wanted to do something, but I didn't want to compete in throwing anymore.” She was an assistant track coach at UC Irvine for eight years, and today splits time between coaching and her massage therapy job.
 
She is particularly enamored by how coaches can do their work today – way different than when she was competing.
 
“With all of our technology, it's easy to show someone good technique on a cell phone or an I-pad,” she said. “You can have someone take a video of you and come back and analyze it and try to change it. When I was throwing, you had to have a camera and have the film developed … It took a week or two to get everything done.”
 
But from chores on the dairy farm to competition in the Olympics, Griffin got everything done.
 
“The bottom line is that every champion with whom I have been associated has had a picture of themselves that others may not see,” Foreman said.
 
Until one day when 100,000 others at an Olympic Games might get a chance to see that picture clearly. See it amid the noise, the cheers …
 
… and the sheer volume of it all.