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Lindsay Benko's star-studded swimming career includes eight first places at Indiana state meets, school and state records in the 100 and 200 freestyles, countless first places for the University of Southern California in NCAA Division I-A meets and a gold medal in the 2000 Olympics.
She can thank a tree for all of that.
"The reason I started swimming," Benko said, "was because I fell out of a tree. I was sliding down like you slide down a fire pole, and my foot got caught in a 'V'. I twisted my knee. The therapist thought it would be good for me to swim."
She fell out of the tree when she was 6. Now she is 24 and carries a gold medal for being a member of the first-place 800-meter relay team in the Olympics in Sydney, Australia.
Benko, an Elkhart native, stopped by Wawasee Middle School Thursday to speak to Wawasee swim club members of all ages. The recent USC graduate, clad in jeans and a black sweatshirt jacket with the letters USA printed in red, talked about her four 'D's' then took questions from eager young swimmers packed in a lecture room.
Falling out of a tree only got Benko started. From then on she developed her four D's: desire, dedication, determination and discipline.
Three years after her accident, she won her first Indiana state championship in the 200 freestyle at age 9. As an eighth-grader she won her first junior national title. Swimming for Elkhart Central, she dominated whatever event she competed in at the high school level and appeared in Sports Illustrated's "Faces in the Crowd." Her successes continued at USC, where she won NCAA titles in the 500 freestyle three out of four years, and then at the 2000 Olympics.
The 6-foot-1 Benko majored in communications and graduated from USC in 1999. For the next three years, her job is to train for the 2004 Olympics. Benko puts in six to eight hours a day in hopes of returning to the Olympics at 27, an age she acknowledges as "really old for a swimmer." She still resides near Los Angeles and trains outside every day. She hopes her body - back troubles flare up - and motivation allow her to again reach the Olympics.
Why does she want to return? While she and Samantha Arsenault, Jenny Thompson and Diana Munz claimed the gold in the 800 relay, Benko did not fare as well in individual events, and she is determined - one of her D words - to perform better in individual freestyles, her best stroke, in 2004.
"That motivates me for next time," she said.
She never thought about the first time, at least not until her junior year of college.
"When I went to USC," she said, "I never thought about being an Olympian."
But even Lindsay Benko admitted she had discouraging days like everyone else.
"When I was a freshman in high school," she said, "I wanted to call it quits. I didn't love it. It wasn't for me anymore. My dad flat-out asked me, 'Do you want to quit?' I said 'Yes.' That was the best thing he could have done, let me make my own decision.
"After two or three days of missing practices, I found that I kind of missed it."
She still has her days she would love to take a day off and skip practice, but she finds those are the days that reward her once she's finished.
"One time my goggles just filled up with tears," she said. "I did 6,000 main sets. I just couldn't do anymore. After practices like that, I go out and buy myself an ice cream cone."
Competing in the Olympics was new to Benko, but visiting Australia was not.
She had been to Australia three previous times.
During the Olympics, she and 17 other female swimmers lived in a house in the Olympic Village, which featured several blocks of houses built for 10,000 Olympic athletes.
Benko dined in a cafeteria five football fields long, so big it could feed 5,000 Olympic athletes at once. She climbed the Sydney bridge. She swam in front of a live crowd of 18,000 people.
The U.S. swim team captured 33 medals, more than 1/3 of the Olympic medals won by the United States.
"When I was on the podium and they were raising the flag," she said, "that was when I was as proud as I have ever been to be an American. Every time now I'm somewhere that I hear the national anthem - like at a basketball game - I get emotional.
"Now it has a completely different meaning for me."
The unassuming Benko ended her talk with the Wawasee swim members by pulling out her gold medal, twirling it through the air and saying with a grin, "You can come down here and swing it around, but just don't drop it."
The day Benko dropped out of a tree sent her on the path that allowed her to claim that gold medal.
