The Official Site of Misty May

Fri, Jul 25th 2008, 11:11

Q and A with Misty from NBCOlympics.com

Whenever she decides to end her beach volleyball career, Misty May-Treanor will go down as arguably the best female to ever play the game. She already owns the most titles in history for a woman, and was the fastest player ever to reach 100 career championships. In Beijing, she and partner Kerri Walsh look to become the first beach volleyball team to win two gold medals. So enjoy her while she’s still around. Prior to the 2008 season, May-Treanor told NBC Olympics that she’s ready to start a family.

You and Kerri have dominated domestically and internationally again this year. What keeps you two motivated?

Our motivation comes from, we know there’s a huge target on our back. Everybody’s aiming for us, and we got to stay one step ahead of the other teams. You go to the Olympics, it’s a clean slate, it’s 0-0. It doesn’t matter what you’ve won in the past and maybe what you’re going to win in the future. It’s about the now. So Kerri and I know that. We want to get better, we want to improve, and we want to win another gold medal. We want to be the best team that there is in beach volleyball history, and the first team to ever win back-to-back gold medals.

Do you think you two have an edge because you’ve been together for so long?

I think our experience helps Kerri and I. This will be our eighth season together and definitely — experience, that’s on our side. We’re veterans even though I’m 30 and she’s 29, but when it comes to those tight situations, we know that the game’s not over. And we can come back from anything because we’ve done it in the past.

Do you and Kerri spend a lot of time together off the court?

Domestically, it’s hard. We travel so much together. She stays with her husband domestically when we’re playing. But we’ll eat dinner when we can from time to time. Internationally, though, we room together, we’ll go shopping together, hit the town, kind of see the sights. But during the off season, we each have our own hobbies, and usually I’m in Florida she’s in California, so it gets pretty difficult to find time to get together.

About the only thing that’s different for you and Kerri this time compared to last Olympics is the fact that you’re married. Does that change anything? Could these be your last Olympics?

Yeah I don’t know. We’re not married to each other, but we are married (laughs). Her husband (Casey Jennings) is great, he travels on tour with us. He’s a professional beach volleyball player. My husband (Florida Marlins catcher Matt Treanor), he gets to see us play live once a year and that’s usually in Thailand. But both (Kerri and I), we’re ready, we want to have families. But there is a season still going on, even after the Beijing Games. So we’re not looking too far ahead, but it is in the back of our minds that it would be nice to start that and come back to volleyball. But when that happens, we’re not sure now. We only have one goal in mind and that’s winning another gold medal in Beijing.