No one, Jonathan Winder says, has told him anything specific. So he continues to show up for practice at the U.S. national volleyball team’s facility in Anaheim, Calif., every morning, still holding out hope he’ll be called to London for the Olympic Games this summer.
But it’s clear those plans aren’t going well. When the U.S. team opened play in the eight-nation NORCECA tournament this week in Long Beach, Calif., Winder was sitting in the stands in blue jeans and a gray T-shirt.
“This is the Olympic qualifier,” he said with a strained smile. “So that’s not a good sign.”
And when coach Alan Knipe chose 20 players for his preliminary Olympic qualifying roster, Winder was the only setter in the training camp who wasn’t on it.
“It doesn’t change anything,” Winder said, looking down on the court where the U.S. was trouncing Trinidad and Tobago. “I’m still going to do what I’m doing. Everybody’s really similar in talent level. It often just comes down to the coach’s decision about the opportunity he gives the players and if you take advantage of that opportunity.”
Winder chuckles at what some might consider his misfortune. Truth is, he has been pretty lucky. Things could have turned out much differently after his father, Bill, died of heart disease while the family was at a Fourth of July picnic. Winder was 4.
A group of his father’s friends in Orange County, Calif., helped relocate Jonathan, two siblings and their mother from suburban Chicago, then took turns serving as the children’s surrogate father.
“It was basically a big, giant blessing,” Winder’s mother, Jean, said. “And a privilege to be able to be a part of their parenting, their fathering. I was so grateful for them — constantly — for what they did with my kids.”
Winder flourished with that support. He was the best player on his Little League team, a standout in AAU basketball and AYSO soccer. And by 15, he had been named to the U.S. junior national team in volleyball.
That earned him a scholarship to Pepperdine, where he fell in love with — and eventually married — Jaimie-Rose, the daughter of basketball coach Vance Walberg.
Anyone would be lucky to accomplish any one of those things. But playing in the Olympics has been Winder’s goal since he was old enough to know there was an Olympics.
“Why I decided to play volleyball was to play in the Olympics,” he says. “Playing in Europe is not my dream. When I was 5, I wasn’t dreaming of going to play volleyball in Greece. I was dreaming of playing in the Olympics.”
And now it looks like this is where the fairy tale will end. Donald Suxho has been named the starting setter for the U.S. team, backed by Brian Thornton. Kevin Hansen, a gold medalist in 2008, is also available for the 12-man team Knipe would take to London should the U.S. qualify.
Barring injury, that would seem to leave Winder, 26, facing a long climb between now and July, when the Olympic roster is due.
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“Obviously the comfort level is a little further along with those guys,” Knipe said. “Jon’s going to get better. He very much will have an opportunity at the beginning of the next quad (the four-year period leading into an Olympics). And probably a better opportunity than he has right now with this group.”
“I’ve learned a ton in these four years,” Winder said. “Regardless of if I make it or I don’t make it, it’s been a really valuable four years for me. I’ve grown in a lot of different ways.”