By Bill Koch
When USA Volleyball announced this week that UC’s Jordan Thompson had been selected to play for the U.S. Women's Olympic Volleyball Team this summer she became the 17th UC athlete to earn a spot in the Olympics, the first since runner Mary Wineberg won a gold medal in the 4x100 relay in 2008.
Thompson was a first-team All-American at UC during her senior season in 2019 when she was named the American Athletic Conference Player of the Year. She’s the Bearcats’ career leader in kills and finished seventh in NCAA history in career kills.
Other gold medal winners from UC are Jenny Kemp, who won in swimming as part of the 4x100 relay in 1972; George Wilson, who won in basketball in 1964; and Oscar Robertson, who won in basketball in 1960.
Thompson has a good chance to join that pantheon of UC gold medal winners. The U.S. is ranked No. 1 in the world and is considered the favorite to win in Tokyo. The UC grad is one of eight Olympic rookies on the team.
The U.S. has never won a gold medal in women’s volleyball, but has earned two silver medals and three bronze medals.
The Big O was the first UC Olympian to win a gold medal. Coming off a senior year at UC in which he led the nation with 33.7 points per game and was named the national player of the year, Robertson was a player of such enormous talent that many years later his teammates still spoke with reverence about his exploits on the court.
In an interview I did about that team on its 50th anniversary in 2010, Bob Boozer, a forward from Kansas State who played alongside Robertson in those Olympics, said the Big O “played the game like he invented it. Oscar was James Naismith in tennis shoes. He did what he wanted to do.”
The 1960 Summer Olympics were the Games of Cassius Clay and Rafer Johnson, who became the first Black athlete to carry the flag for the American delegation. It was also the first time the Summer Olympics were televised, with CBS paying $394,000 for the broadcast rights.
The 1992 USA Men’s Basketball team was famously known as the Dream Team. In 1960 there was no such thing as a Dream Team. When the U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team travelled to Rome, it was merely a sports team on a mission to win a gold medal for its country.
It accomplished that goal without the marketing apparatus that accompanies such endeavors today. There were no NBA players on the 1960 team, but there were plenty of future NBA greats, such as Robertson, Jerry Lucas (Ohio State), Jerry West (West Virginia), and Walt Bellamy (Indiana), all of whom would land in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Fifth years later, they refused to concede anything to the 1992 Dream Team that included Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, David Robinson, and Patrick Ewing.
That team also fulfilled its mission by bringing home the gold, but to considerably more acclaim than its predecessors received in 1960.
“What did the Dream Team have that we didn’t have? ” Robertson said in a 2010 interview. “They had more publicity and made more money. That’s where it stops.”
The Dream Team – the first to include NBA players – won its Olympic games by an average margin of 43.8 points, a shade more than the 42.4-point margin the 1960 team averaged. Coached by the University of California’s legendary Pete Newell, the 1960 team held its opponents to an average of 59.5 points and ran the U.S. winning streak to 36 games over five Olympics.
Robertson and Lucas, who was the youngest player on the team at age 20, were the leading scorers, each averaging 17.0 points. West averaged 13.8 and Adrian Smith (Kentucky) averaged 10.9.
Smith had played with Robertson in the Pan American Games the previous year in Chicago.
“When I was at Kentucky, I used to read about him,” Smith said. “I said, nobody’s really that good. Until I made the Pan American team and saw him play in the Pan American trials. I got to be a teammate of his and then I realized what a special, great player he was.”
Nine of the players on the 1960 Olympic team eventually played in the NBA. Four of them – Robertson, Lucas, Bellamy and Terry Dischinger – became rookie of the year.
“It was just an awesome team,” Smith said. “We had speed. We had shooting. We had rebounding. We had height. If you had kept that team together, we might have been a contender for an NBA championship.”
Five members of the 1960 Olympic team – Robertson, Lucas, Boozer, Smith and Jay Arnette – did play together on the 1963-64 Cincinnati Royals. They didn’t win the NBA championship, but they produced a 55-25 regular season record, the best of any Royals team during its 15-year stay in Cincinnati.
That team still finished four games behind the Boston Celtics in the NBA’s Eastern Division and lost to the Celtics, four games to one in the division finals.
“Maybe we needed a sixth man,” Robertson said.
Robertson finally won his only NBA title with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the Milwaukee Bucks in 1971, playing on the same team with Boozer. Lucas won the title in 1973 with the New York Knicks.
Regardless of what they accomplished later in their careers, the players on the 1960 Olympic team will always be remembered as one of the greatest Olympic teams of all time.
“Being with the guys I played with and having the friendships over the years has been tremendous for me,” Robertson said. “It was a magic moment that no one even knew that much about until they decided to bring up the Dream Team. Then they looked back and saw how good of a team we did have.”
Now Jordan Thompson has a chance help the U.S. women’s volleyball team create its own magic moments.
When USA Volleyball announced this week that UC’s Jordan Thompson had been selected to play for the U.S. Women's Olympic Volleyball Team this summer she became the 17th UC athlete to earn a spot in the Olympics, the first since runner Mary Wineberg won a gold medal in the 4x100 relay in 2008.
Thompson was a first-team All-American at UC during her senior season in 2019 when she was named the American Athletic Conference Player of the Year. She’s the Bearcats’ career leader in kills and finished seventh in NCAA history in career kills.
Other gold medal winners from UC are Jenny Kemp, who won in swimming as part of the 4x100 relay in 1972; George Wilson, who won in basketball in 1964; and Oscar Robertson, who won in basketball in 1960.
Thompson has a good chance to join that pantheon of UC gold medal winners. The U.S. is ranked No. 1 in the world and is considered the favorite to win in Tokyo. The UC grad is one of eight Olympic rookies on the team.
The U.S. has never won a gold medal in women’s volleyball, but has earned two silver medals and three bronze medals.
The Big O was the first UC Olympian to win a gold medal. Coming off a senior year at UC in which he led the nation with 33.7 points per game and was named the national player of the year, Robertson was a player of such enormous talent that many years later his teammates still spoke with reverence about his exploits on the court.
In an interview I did about that team on its 50th anniversary in 2010, Bob Boozer, a forward from Kansas State who played alongside Robertson in those Olympics, said the Big O “played the game like he invented it. Oscar was James Naismith in tennis shoes. He did what he wanted to do.”
The 1960 Summer Olympics were the Games of Cassius Clay and Rafer Johnson, who became the first Black athlete to carry the flag for the American delegation. It was also the first time the Summer Olympics were televised, with CBS paying $394,000 for the broadcast rights.
The 1992 USA Men’s Basketball team was famously known as the Dream Team. In 1960 there was no such thing as a Dream Team. When the U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team travelled to Rome, it was merely a sports team on a mission to win a gold medal for its country.
It accomplished that goal without the marketing apparatus that accompanies such endeavors today. There were no NBA players on the 1960 team, but there were plenty of future NBA greats, such as Robertson, Jerry Lucas (Ohio State), Jerry West (West Virginia), and Walt Bellamy (Indiana), all of whom would land in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Fifth years later, they refused to concede anything to the 1992 Dream Team that included Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, David Robinson, and Patrick Ewing.
That team also fulfilled its mission by bringing home the gold, but to considerably more acclaim than its predecessors received in 1960.
“What did the Dream Team have that we didn’t have? ” Robertson said in a 2010 interview. “They had more publicity and made more money. That’s where it stops.”
The Dream Team – the first to include NBA players – won its Olympic games by an average margin of 43.8 points, a shade more than the 42.4-point margin the 1960 team averaged. Coached by the University of California’s legendary Pete Newell, the 1960 team held its opponents to an average of 59.5 points and ran the U.S. winning streak to 36 games over five Olympics.
Robertson and Lucas, who was the youngest player on the team at age 20, were the leading scorers, each averaging 17.0 points. West averaged 13.8 and Adrian Smith (Kentucky) averaged 10.9.
Smith had played with Robertson in the Pan American Games the previous year in Chicago.
“When I was at Kentucky, I used to read about him,” Smith said. “I said, nobody’s really that good. Until I made the Pan American team and saw him play in the Pan American trials. I got to be a teammate of his and then I realized what a special, great player he was.”
Nine of the players on the 1960 Olympic team eventually played in the NBA. Four of them – Robertson, Lucas, Bellamy and Terry Dischinger – became rookie of the year.
“It was just an awesome team,” Smith said. “We had speed. We had shooting. We had rebounding. We had height. If you had kept that team together, we might have been a contender for an NBA championship.”
Five members of the 1960 Olympic team – Robertson, Lucas, Boozer, Smith and Jay Arnette – did play together on the 1963-64 Cincinnati Royals. They didn’t win the NBA championship, but they produced a 55-25 regular season record, the best of any Royals team during its 15-year stay in Cincinnati.
That team still finished four games behind the Boston Celtics in the NBA’s Eastern Division and lost to the Celtics, four games to one in the division finals.
“Maybe we needed a sixth man,” Robertson said.
Robertson finally won his only NBA title with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the Milwaukee Bucks in 1971, playing on the same team with Boozer. Lucas won the title in 1973 with the New York Knicks.
Regardless of what they accomplished later in their careers, the players on the 1960 Olympic team will always be remembered as one of the greatest Olympic teams of all time.
“Being with the guys I played with and having the friendships over the years has been tremendous for me,” Robertson said. “It was a magic moment that no one even knew that much about until they decided to bring up the Dream Team. Then they looked back and saw how good of a team we did have.”
Now Jordan Thompson has a chance help the U.S. women’s volleyball team create its own magic moments.
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