Bree and her bobsled: Story just needs ending
CRAIG HILL; Staff writer
WHISTLER, B.C. – Tim Schaaf is a videographer and a screenwriter, so he knows a good story when sees one.
One of his favorites is of how a football coach with a really bad idea and a guy with a broken kidney led to Olympic glory for a Bremerton woman.
The star of the story is his younger sister, Bree Schaaf, who makes her Olympic debut tonight in bobsled at the Whistler Sliding Centre.
As the pilot of USA 3, the third-ranked of America’s three sleds, Schaaf should be happy just being at the games, especially since she just finished her first complete season on the World Cup circuit.
But that’s not Schaaf’s style.
“Her goal, I’m sure, is to win the gold medal,” her brother said. “But she’ll be proud of whatever she does.”
Considering the 29-year-old qualified for the Olympics while sliding on tracks she’d never slid before, competing on a track she and her brakeman, Emily Azevedo of Chico, Calif., are actually familiar with could make them a threat to medal.
“Bree can do anything,” said U.S. skeleton slider Noelle Pikus-Pace, Schaaf’s former roommate. “She has worked so hard and done so much to get here, nothing would surprise me.”
* * *
The story begins with Schaaf mastering the art of multi-tasking.
She dabbled in ballet, volleyball, basketball and track. She even played the piano, guitar, bass and trombone. Seemingly, she did well at everything.
“You never really think about it when you are a kid, but looking back she was kind of a freak,” Tim Schaaf said.
Because Schaaf was involved in so many activities, she wasn’t as polished an athlete as some of her friends. But she stood out because of her athleticism.
In high school, Schaaf, who is now 5-foot-10 and 167 pounds, had a vertical leap of 31 inches, better than some of the boys on the football team.
“People would watch the volleyball games and say, ‘Who’s that girl whose head is always above the net?’” Tim Schaaf said.
She earned a volleyball scholarship to Portland State University, where she also claimed Big Sky Conference all-academic honors all four years on her way to a degree in anthropology.
When she graduated, her talents could have taken her in many directions. She even worked as a goldsmith at Chrey’s Fine Jewelry in Bremerton.
The idea of sliding down an icy track at 80 mph never crossed her mind. In 2001, that would change thanks to an overly aggressive football coach.
* * *
The football coach was an assistant at Occidental College near Los Angeles. It’s where Tim Schaaf played wide receiver after a short stint at the University of Puget Sound and a junior college.
During a helmets-only practice in 2001, the coach told his linebackers he’d buy lunch for anybody who laid out a receiver.
Tim Schaaf was that receiver. A linebacker drove his helmet directly into Schaff’s kidney.
Schaaf jumped up, but could barely walk. At the hospital, doctors told him his kidney was broken. Later they’d tell him his football career was over.
“I didn’t even know you could break your kidney,” he said.
Sharing his sister’s drive, he wasn’t ready to give up competition. So while watching the famous “agony of defeat” ski jumping accident from ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” he started thinking about pursuing winter sports.
He contacted the U.S. bobsled team, which encouraged him to try out for the skeleton team following the 2002 Olympics.
Tim Schaaf impressed coaches so much at tryouts that one them asked if he knew anybody with similar athleticism.
“I do,” he said. “She’s from the same gene pool.”
He called his sister, who flew out to join him at trials the next day.
Both made the developmental program, and eventually both made the national team.
* * *
Tim Schaaf and Pikus-Pace figured Bree Schaaf could have reached the Olympics as skeleton slider. She had two top-10 finishes on the World Cup in 2007 and was 11th at the World Championships.
“She was very good,” Pikus-Pace said. “She is a great athlete.”
But Schaaf was sliding with a disadvantage. She has a big head.
While the other sliders wore small helmets, she wore a medium. The G-forces on her head made it impossible to hold her head up high enough to see where she was going. Tim Schaaf says an average-size head feels like it weighs 91 pounds in the final turns of a skeleton run. Bree Schaaf’s weighed even more. When she watched her races on TV, she could hear her helmet drag across the ice
“So after years of literally banging my head against the ice I decided I’d hit a plateau,” Bree Schaaf said.
She wanted to try bobsled, but her coaches weren’t excited about the idea because they didn’t think she had the power or speed.
“It’s amazing to me that even with all her natural ability she’s still been met with resistance every step of the way,” Tim Schaaf said.
But once they timed Bree Schaaf and re-evaluated her athleticism, it became clear she’d be perfect for bobsled if she could get a little bigger.
Schaaf put on 20 pounds of what she calls “functional weight” and by 2007 was making a mark on the team.
She finished fourth in the team trials but had two podium finishes on the America’s Cup circuit in 2008 and four more in ’09. In ’09 she locked up the job as pilot of USA 3 on the World Cup circuit.
Now, all she had to do was finish the 2010 season ahead of Canada 3 and she’d go to the Olympics.
* * *
As is the case with any good story, the odds of making it to the games were stacked against Bree Schaaf.
As a rookie she didn’t know the tracks as well as Canada 3 pilot Amanda Stepenko, who was in her fifth World Cup season.
“In bobsled, more than any other sport, knowing the course is a huge advantage,” Schaaf said.
As USA 3, Schaaf got last pick of equipment. She said it was not uncommon for her to put pairs of $6,000 sled runners on her credit card to make sure he was happy with her gear.
Learning the new tracks took a pounding on Schaaf. She didn’t tell her family on days when she crashed her sled, but they knew anyway.
Schaaf regularly calls and text-messages her brother; 27-year-old sister Kara; and her parents, Terri and Ken.
“So when all of sudden I’d stop hearing from her I knew something was up,” Tim Schaaf said.
But wrecks aside, her family knew things were mostly going well because she consistently outdrove Canada 3 all season. She beat Stepenko in every race but two.
Entering the final event of the year in St. Moritz, all Schaaf had to do was finish no worse than nine spots behind Canada 3 and she would go to the Olympics.
Basically she needed only to keep her sled upright. But during training, Schaaf crashed twice.
“It was pretty nerve-racking,” Schaaf said of her final run. “It was a lot of pressure. All I had to do was get down, but suddenly I was thinking about the worst-case scenario.”
Schaaf was under pressure all season trying to stay ahead of the Canadians. She could handle one more run.
She managed to cross the finish line, finishing No. 9 in the world. Canada 3 was No. 10.
She was going to the Olympics.
“It was an amazing feeling,” Schaaf said. “I can’t imagine facing any more pressure at the Olympics.”
* * *
There wasn’t much pressure at all the first week of the games.
She hung out with friends and family, walked in the opening ceremonies and even met Vice President Joe Biden.
“But after a couple of days she told me, ‘I think I’ve OD’d on fun,’” Tim Schaaf said. “You could tell she was starting to get focused to compete.”
Bree Schaaf’s friends and family will be trackside tonight for her first two runs and Wednesday for her final two runs.
As a screenwriter, Tim Schaaf knows he’ll be watching a special story continue to unfold. But he knows there’s still something missing.
“All we need is an ending,” Tim Schaaf said. “Then we’ll shoot backward from there.”
Craig Hill: 253-597-8497
craig.hill@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/olympics
