Kerri Walsh Jennings, the beach volleyball star, is in position to become only the second American woman to win team gold medals at four consecutive Olympics. But during her final preparation for the Rio Games, she opened up about what she considers a more important accomplishment — saving her marriage.
The year after winning a gold medal in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Walsh Jennings said, she visited Michael Gervais, a noted sports psychologist in Southern California.
“My life was falling apart,” she told USA TODAY Sports, recalling that she was pregnant with her first child and having contractions during the office visit. “At the time, my husband was done.”
Casey Jennings said he was prepared to leave his wife, in part because her drive to excel in beach volleyball contributed to the couple drifting apart.
“We lost that connection, and I didn’t think we could get it back,” he said.
The two met in 2001 when they were trying to make it on the professional beach volleyball tour. Both succeeded, and their romance took off.
They married in 2004, the same year Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty May-Treanor teamed up to win their first Olympic gold medal in the Athens Games. During the 2008 Olympics, when Walsh Jennings won her second gold medal, the marriage began to strain.
“There was so much internal pressure to win and repeat from Athens,” Walsh Jennings said. “It wasn’t joyful, it was work.
“In putting my head down and going to work, I disconnected from my husband and my family.”
Meanwhile, Jennings said, he had turned to alcohol and at his wife’s request entered rehab. He said the 28-day program persuaded him to stop drinking but that he remained skeptical about repairing the marriage.
At that time, Walsh Jennings said, she reached out to Gervais, the sports psychologist who doubled as a couple’s therapist, because she thought that with help she could reconnect with her husband.
“I knew he loved me, and I knew I loved him,” Walsh Jennings said. “Talking to Gervais, he’s like, ‘If one of you has the tip of your pinky toe in, you have hope.’ I had my whole self in, my husband still had the tip of his pinky toe (in), so I had hope.”
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Gervais said he worked with Walsh Jennings on how to stay present and grounded.
“She had full command of that on the beach,” he said. “She knows how to be grounded and present on the sand. So how do you do that at dinner? How do you do that at home? How do you do that in public? And then how do we take that and deepen the relationships she cares so much about, with Casey?
“That was kind of the journey we went on together,” Gervais said.
The process required that both agree to a journey of self-exploration — “inner work, lonely work,” Gervais said — and then come together as they rebuilt their relationship on openness and honesty.
“It’s a great celebration of what can be when we take responsibility to discover ourselves and to discover ourselves inside of a relationship,” he said.
Six months after the first meeting with Gervais, Walsh Jennings said, she knew the marriage would survive. “But it felt like it was six years. Every day was just really gnarly but beautiful. You know, growth is beautiful.”
Now the couple has three children, and Jennings has run the household in Southern California when Walsh Jennings has traveled overseas for competition with her new teammate, April Ross. (May-Treanor retired after the 2012 Games.) With Jennings at home, his famous wife was able to qualify for the Rio Games and put herself in position to join retired basketball star Lisa Leslie as the only American women to win team gold medals at four consecutive Olympics.
But most important, Walsh Jennings and Jennings said, their life together is on solid ground.
“It’s never going to be perfect, but it’s awesome right now,” Jennings said. “With all the things that we went through, I wouldn’t trade a thing to be where we are today.”
