Flo Hyman Cause Of Death

With a week leading upwardly to Houston'due south Flo Hyman Collegiate Loving cup, we honour a Cougar Great in Flo Hyman.

Flo Hyman, considered one of the most influential volleyball players in University of Houston history, was a iii-year letterwinner from 1974-76 for the Cougars. She was a 1998 Hall of Award inductee subsequently being named a 3-time AIAW All-America honoree. She was also named AIAW National Player of the Yr in 1976 and went on to represent to USA National Team capture a silverish medal at the 22^nd Olympiad in Los Angeles, Calif. with Houston teammates Rita Crockett and Rose Magers.

It is impossible to quantify the touch on Flo Hyman had on the sport of volleyball with just words. She was the most famous volleyball thespian of the time, not just hither in the United states of america, only also worldwide.

Flo was a sight for sore eyes in a time when athletics was starting to go all about individual celebrity. Her charisma and devotion were both focused on the squad rather than herself as an individual. Flo and her six human foot five inch frame had information technology all, speed, forcefulness and finesse. There was no other volleyball player similar her anywhere in the world at the time.

Flo was built-in in Los Angeles on July 29, 1954. She discovered volleyball and her destiny while attending loftier school in Inglewood, California. She would attend college at the University of Houston where she was named a collegiate All-American 3 times. In 1975 she joined the USVBA'southward year round training team and was named a commencement team All-American 1976, 1977, and 1978. She was the Most Valuable Player in 1977.

She was on the U.S. Olympic squad in 1980 and 1984. In 1980 the U.S. boycotted the games in Moscow, just in 1984 Flo captained the silver medal winning team. Some of her other international achievements include playing in the World Championships in 1978 and 1982 (Bronze Medal), the World Loving cup in 1977 and 1981, when she was named the Best Attacker, the Pan-Am Games in 1975, 1979, and 1983, the NORCECA Championships in 1975, 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983, and the World University Games in 1973 and 1977. She was named All World and selected equally the About Valuable Player in countless international tournaments, every bit well every bit being named to numerous All-Star Teams. In 1985 she was named ane of the Best Great Volleyball Players.

The world prematurely lost Flo in January of 1986 when she collapsed during a match in the Japanese League. She was a victim of Marfan Syndrome, a sickness that she never knew she had. With news of her passing, people were grieving the whole world over. In a tribute to Flo at a special memorial service conduted at the U.S. Olympic Grooming Center in Colorado Springs, the following remarks were made most Flo: "Flo was more than than a slap-up athlete who pioneered in her sport and accomplished so many firsts... She left us as she would have wanted united states of america to retrieve her, fighting difficult for the success that but commitment would realize and encouraging her teammates to seek and attain those lofty goals with her. She was and will continue to be an example that nosotros all should emulate as nosotros pass through life no affair what path nosotros choose to walk. We will never see her similar once more. No i will ever lead U.S. Volleyball to so many proud and satisfying moments in the world arena. We are all much better because she was with us for a while merely we are left so empty and unfulfilled considering she left too soon." (USVBA)

Flora "Flo" Hyman: VolleyballAmerican Star of the Women's International Sports Hall of Fame

Courtesy of http://www.womentalksports.com/athlete/934/FloraFlo-Hyman and was written by Jessica Bartter.

A brilliant star burned out early on when Flo Hyman complanate to her death during a professional volleyball lucifer in Japan at age 31. Her friends, family, and fans were distraught over her death and although Flo had nicknamed herself the "onetime lady" of volleyball, they all believed her life and career were far too premature to come to an end. But sadly, on January 24, 1986, her life and career ended in the aforementioned instant.

Though virtually certainly on her way to bigger and better things, Hyman achieved a tremendous amount during her short life and career, becoming the face of American volleyball as it was catapulted from a recreational pastime to the pop college and youth sport information technology is today. Hyman'south ain participation in volleyball started recreationally as she and her older sis, Suzanne, would head to the beach from her hometown of Inglewood, California, to look for some pick-up games and tournaments on the sand. Beach volleyball adds several elements of difficulty to the sport of volleyball since simple athletic moments like running and jumping can plough into tremendous feats in the sand. Needless to say, this first greatly prepared Hyman for the forcefulness she would become on the indoor courts.

In high schoolhouse, Hyman played basketball and ran track and field, but she did not play competitive volleyball until she reached her full meridian of 6 feet, 5 inches tall at historic period 17. Her lack of competitive volleyball experience did non seem to touch on her abilities and she earned the first female athletic scholarship awarded past the Academy of Houston in 1974. The 3-time All-American (1974-76) and Most Outstanding Collegiate Player (1976) managed to double major in mathematics and physical education, but chose to get out college early to capitalize on her volleyball skills. She had always planned to render to school to graduate when her volleyball career concluded. Referring to balancing her volleyball career with her education, she once said, "You lot can go to school when y'all're 60. You're simply young once, and you tin can simply do this in one case."¹ She unfortunately never had the chance to render to school and graduate; her volleyball career was however blossoming when she died.

Hyman left the Academy of Houston in 1976 because she saw the great demand the national team had for players like herself. Afterwards placing fifth and eighth in the 1964 and 1968 Olympic Games, respectively, the U.S. national team did not fifty-fifty qualify for the Olympics in 1972 or 1976; Hyman wanted that to change. With Hyman at the helm, the U.South. squad qualified for the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games and was even thought to exist the favorite for gold, but similar 61 other nations, the United States boycotted the Moscow Games.

Adamant to put American women's volleyball on the international radar, Hyman remained with the team and pushed them for another four years. Together they won a bronze medal at the 1982 World Championships in Peru and a silvery medal at the 1983 Pan American Games in Caracas. When the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles arrived, the American squad was set and the Hyman family was excited to lookout her represent the U.s.a. in their very own hometown.

Suzanne, the eldest of the eight Hyman children, recalled watching her little sister and onetime teammate, Florie--as she was affectionately known to her large family--lose the gold medal lucifer. "The family was upward in the stands, crying," she said. "Just Florie came by and waved. You lot could see her smile. She was happy. She had reached her goal. She had played for a gold medal. I thought to myself `If she is happy, why am I crying?'"² The team that had never before medaled in Olympic history earned the silver medal, which is still the highest finish e'er for a women's Olympic indoor volleyball team. The 2008 Beijing Olympics saw a repeat silver medal finish when the American women lost to Brazil in the gilded medal match.

Afterwards those Summer Games, Hyman moved to Nippon to play professionally. While abroad, she realized the The states did non give women's sports as much respect as other countries did. She oft returned home to advocate for increased opportunities and funds for female athletes. She also joined forces with civil rights leader Coretta Scott King, democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, and astronaut Sally Ride to lobby for the Ceremonious Rights Restoration Deed and strengthening of Title Nine.

Hyman had planned to play in Japan for two seasons earlier returning home to give her total attending to broadcasting and coaching American volleyball and continuing her advocacy for equal rights. She had already helped crash-land upwardly her squad Daiei from Japan'southward third division to the first division. Nonetheless, it was during her 2d season in 1986, while playing a match in Matsue City, when she collapsed on the bench after routinely subbing out of a game. Her death was first attributed to a heart attack, only her family unit asked for an autopsy upon her body'southward render to California. The dissection establish that Hyman'due south death actually pointed to a illness known as Marfan Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that tin can touch on many body systems, including the skeleton, optics, heart and blood vessels, nervous organization, skin, and lungs. While Marfan is known to afflict more than than 1 in 5,000 people, often individuals with long arms, fingers and toes, Hyman's diagnosis had gone undetected. The examining doctor constitute a 3-week-old claret clot nigh her deadly aortic tear that suggested an earlier rip had already begun healing when the fatal rupture occurred in the aforementioned area.

Upon the realization that Hyman had a healthy centre, but suffered from an undetected genetic disease, two of her seven remaining siblings went to a Marfan symposium where they were convinced to get tested for the syndrome. The test results of Flo's brother came back positive and he underwent open-heart surgery to correct the disorder, almost certainly saving his life. Flo Hyman had managed to advocate for the well-being of others even after she passed on.

In 1987, National Girls and Women in Sports Day was established to call up Flo Hyman for her "athletic achievements equally well as her philanthropic work to assure equality for women'due south sports."³ While the day has grown to recognize more current sports achievements and draw attending to the connected struggle of gender equality in sports, Flo Hyman is remembered for her positive influence on American civil rights in general and women'due south volleyball in item. This Olympic star still shines brilliant, only from a greater distance now.

Notes

i Biography of Flo Hyman, "Flo Hyman," Wikipedia.org, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flo_Hyman, (May 31, 2008, accessed June xviii, 2008).

2 George Vecsey, "Sports of The Times; Remembering Flo Hyman," New York Times, February 5, 1988.

3 Elizabeth M. Verner, "Seeking Women Donors for National Girls and Women in Sports Day," The Periodical of Physical Education, Recreation and Trip the light fantastic (September i, 1998).

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Sports of The Times; Remembering Flo Hyman

There is but 1 matter wrong virtually the Flo Hyman Award: it came to be named for the Old Lady of volleyball much besides before long.

She was one of the almost charismatic athletes this country ever produced, rail thin and alpine, with a smile that energized an arena.

But she died from Marfan syndrome during a match at the age of 31, ii years agone, and her name was memorialized on an honor - and her memory has helped extend the lives of other people, including her blood brother.

The Flo Hyman Accolade, given by Major League Volleyball to the female athlete who ''embodies the spirit and dignity'' of the late volleyball star, was presented to Jackie Joyner-Kersee yesterday in Washington during National Women in Sports Day, organized by the Women'southward Sports Foundation. Last year the first Flo Hyman award went to Martina Navratilova.

Yesterday, famous athletes like Billie Jean King, Pam Shriver, Zina Garrison, Carol Mann and Joyner-Kersee visited the capital letter to lobby for women's sports, while women held awareness programs in many states. Senator Bob Packwood, Republican of Oregon, announced the accolade to Joyner-Kersee in the morning and President Reagan presented it to her during a anniversary at the White Firm.

'Flo was a leader on and off the courtroom, trying to help the hereafter generations,'' Joyner-Kersee said in an interview. ''I just met her one time, when my high schoolhouse team went to spotter the national team. She asked me if I wanted to play volleyball.''

Joyner-Kersee stuck with basketball and track and field, and is doing fine. Her world-record performances in the long spring and the heptathlon are the best lobby women's sports could ever have, but as Flo Hyman's exuberance and maturity gave women'southward volleyball a big-fourth dimension appearance.

HYMAN was 6 feet five inches tall and originally self-witting about her height. Simply her family and friends convinced her that her peak was a blessing.

Nobody knew that her angular frame independent signs of Marfan syndrome, a condition simply beginning to be recognized in thousands of Americans - often taller people with long arms, long fingers, oddly shaped chest bones.

Marfan is an inherited disorder of connective tissue that affects basic and ligaments, eyes, the eye and blood system, and the lungs. Flo Hyman became America'due south best-known volleyball player with a faulty aorta, but she did non know it.

''We never heard of it,'' said Suzanne Jett, her sis and the oldest of eight children - ''vii, at present,'' Jett added softly.

The family lived in Inglewood, not far from the California beach towns of Redondo, Manhattan and Hermosa, where mostly sun-broiled blond people frolicked on sandy volleyball courts in the lx'southward. Basketball was for blacks. Volleyball, even with Wilt Chamberlain every bit its champion, was mostly for whites.

''Florie was six anxiety alpine in elementary schoolhouse,'' Jett recalled, using the nickname that only family members could apply. ''She was such a big, young, powerful girl. I took her to the beach with me, and we used to play in the two-man tournaments. She joined a youth team that went to Russia. Afterwards that, volleyball was her sport, not basketball.''

Attracted to volleyball, with its teamwork and its finesse, its power and its grace, Hyman was an all-American at the University of Houston, and and so joined a national team that was eventually sequestered in southern California. Arie Selinger, the hard-driving Polish-Israeli-American coach, had to persuade her she really did desire to fustigate her bony frame into the hard floor, over and once more, to retrieve a wayward volleyball.

''I've had a lot of fights with the floor,'' she said with a whooping laugh.

The Americans were primed to brand a run for the gold medal in 1980, but the Carter Assistants's cold-shoulder of the Summer Games in Moscow postponed or wrecked dreams for hundreds of athletes. Nearly of the women stayed together for the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, but in the gold-medal match, information technology was Ping Lang and her Chinese teammates who won the gold, not Flo Hyman and her teammates, who had waited then long.

''The family was up in the stands, crying,'' Suzanne Jett recalled. ''But Florie came past and waved. Y'all could see her grin. She was happy. She had reached her goal. She had played for a gold medal. I thought to myself, 'If she is happy, why am I crying?' ''

Selinger was forced out later the Summer Games and Hyman went to play in Nippon, looking to coach over at that place.

''Florie had a lot of doors opening for her,'' her oldest sister said. ''Broadcasting. Interim. Coaching. Just she would come home and lobby for more money for women's sports. She felt this state doesn't give women'due south sports equally much as other countries practice. She tried to make things meliorate. But she besides nursed her human relationship with the Japanese.

''She got friendly with American baseball players and their wives, she got to know the owner of an American nightclub, she loved the Japanese,'' said Suzanne Jett, who edits television commercials in Los Angeles. ''I visited her and we went out dancing. I was supposed to become over again.''

ON Jan. 24, 1986, during a normal residuum on the bench, Flo Hyman fell over dead. Her sister came over to claim her body. The family unit eventually learned from a pathologist in California that Hyman had died of something called Marfan syndrome. The family has learned more about the ailment from the National Marfan Foundation, run past Priscilla Ciccariello in Port Washington, L.I.

''My blood brother and I went to a Marfan symposium run by Johns Hopkins in Baltimore,'' Jett said. ''People kept saying, 'Are yous sure you don't have it?' considering I'm alpine and thin, like Florie, and accept unusually long arms. I took the examination and did not have the internal manifestations, simply my brother, Michael, had open-eye surgery 2 weeks after. He's all right now. He just had his starting time child. It's something to lookout in the baby.''

Giving an annual award to star athletes like Jackie Joyner-Kersee is i way of remembering Flo Hyman. The awareness of a menacing condition is another legacy of an American champion who could reassure her own family after the loss of a gold medal.

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Nobility, SPIRIT, AND Delivery TO EXCELLENCE: FLO HYMAN

Courtesy of http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/dignity-spirit-and-commitment-excellence-flo-hyman and the African American Registry.

This date marks the nascence of Flo Hyman in 1954. She was an African American athlete specializing in volleyball.

Flo Hyman was born in Inglewood, CA and graduated from Morningside Loftier School. She enrolled at the University of Houston working on a degree in mathematics and concrete education. It was here that she became a three-time all-American in volleyball, culminating as America's top athlete in 1976. At six anxiety 5 inches, Hyman left school in 1978 to train for earth contest in Colorado.

She starred for the United states of america at the World Volleyball Championships that year and in 1982. At the 1981 World Cup in Tokyo, she was named to the half-dozen-member all Earth Cup team. Considered by many equally the best female volleyball player in the world, Hyman led America to a silver medal at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Post-obit the Los Angeles games, Hyman and three of her American teammates began playing professionally in Japan.

On January 24, 1986, during a routine substitution in a Japanese league game, she collapsed and died. An autopsy later found the cause to be Marfan'south syndrome, a congenital middle disorder. In recognition of her accomplishments, she was inducted into the Women's Sports Hall of Fame the same year. In 1987, the Woman'due south Sports Foundation established the Flo Hyman Award, given annually as office of the National Girls and Women in Sports Day to the female athlete who nearly exemplifies the "dignity, spirit, and commitment to excellence" with which Hyman played the game of volleyball.

Reference:
The National Collegiate Athletic Association
700 West. Washington Street
P.O. Box 6222
Indianapolis, Indiana 46206-6222

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Top twoscore Female person Athletes: Flo Hyman

Courtesy of http://espn.get.com/blog/loftier-school/girl/post/_/id/1971/twoscore-greatest-female person-athletes-flo-hyman and ESPN the Magazine

In our increasingly data-driven sports world, a revolution must be quantified. And the numbers and awards say Flo Hyman was revolutionary in American volleyball history.

First, there were the firsts: She was the first female to earn a volleyball scholarship at the University of Houston; a fellow member of the first U.Southward. Olympic team of whatever kind to train year-round; the first U.S adult female named to an All-World Cup team (in 1981); and captain of the first U.S. women'southward volleyball team to earn an Olympic medal, with silver at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. She was too the outset African-American woman to do all of these things.

Merely accolades alone can't practice Hyman justice. For i matter, the 1980 U.S. boycott of the Summertime Olympics in Moscow denied her the opportunity for more glory. And she had to be seen to be truly appreciated. She created a new artful in women's volleyball, with her long, locomotive approach to attacks at the net, her powerful frame rising high above, and her glorious hair, a perfectly picked-out halo that turned her officially listed tiptop of 6-foot-5 into ... who knows? "Probably 6-10 with that big ol' afro," says Hyman's longtime U.S. teammate, Laurel Iversen.

All of that was a theatrical, intimidating prelude to Hyman's devastating hit. Legend has it she could spike the ball 110 mph. She hit so hard that the ball often had funky spin, making information technology appear to rise for an opponent gear up to dig low -- the stuff of nightmares. At the aforementioned time, she was fiendishly accurate. "She could drill some angles yous simply couldn't even imagine," Iversen recalls.

As tearing as Hyman was on the court, she was friendly and endearing off information technology, with a smile that beamed and a personality that beckoned. She overjoyed members of Congress while testifying equally an advocate for Title 9. Fans in Russia and Japan embraced her. On a team filled with pioneering standouts -- including Rita Cadet-Crockett, one of the best pure athletes ever to play the game, and Debbie Green-Vargas, considered the best U.S. women's setter ever -- Hyman was the face. And yet she was forever giving credit to her teammates and to the sport. Information technology's no coincidence that volleyball exploded on the loftier schoolhouse level during Hyman'southward star plough, or that beach volleyball blossomed not long later she tragically left the stage.

When Hyman died in 1986, at the age of 31, during a match for her Japanese professional order, she instantly became a legend, as well as the symbol for a cause. An autopsy revealed she died of a centre problem associated with Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that weakens the body's connective tissue. Hyman'south popularity raised sensation of Marfan's, which led to advances in treatment.

And so in decease as in life, Flora Jean Hyman made everyone pay attention.

-- Luke Cyphers, ESPN The Magazine