Flo Hyman was the breakout star of the 1984 team that won the United States’ first Olympic medal in women’s volleyball. (Focus On Sport/Getty Images)

Flo Hyman didn’t hit volleyballs as much as she annihilated them. Standing 6-foot-5, all arms and legs and towering hair, Hyman was unlike anything women’s volleyball had ever seen in the 1970s. She leaped so high that her knees were even with the bottom of the net.

Then came the swing, a massive roundhouse right delivered with a kind of windup no coach would ever teach but none dared change, one that turned balls into weapons, hurtling more than 100 mph, snarling with such vicious topspin that they sometimes plunged straight to the floor.

“I never wanted to get hit by Flo’s [spikes],” said Rita Buck-Crockett, her friend and U.S. Olympic teammate. “She had a very heavy hand on the ball.”

(The Washington Post)

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U.S. women’s volleyball was never a force until Hyman arrived as a teenager from Inglewood, California, joining a national team that was filling with high-flying, hard-hitting players, several of them Black, coached by an intense Holocaust survivor who led the Americans to a silver medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, igniting a national volleyball passion. Hyman was the best and most recognizable of them, and her success at those Games made her not only a star but a powerful voice for women’s sports.

But then Jan. 24, 1986, at the peak of her fame, Hyman collapsed and died during a volleyball match in Japan, compromised by a genetic ailment she never knew she had. She was 31.

On Saturday, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee will induct Hyman into the Team USA Hall of Fame during a ceremony in Colorado Springs. She joins a class that includes tennis star Serena Williams, basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, gymnast Gabby Douglas, track standout Allyson Felix and Nike founder Phil Knight. Many of those there that night probably have never heard of Flo Hyman; she largely has been forgotten.

Her legacy lives in the boom of volleyball clubs, camps and tournaments and the sea of college matches on television, including the night in 2023 when Nebraska’s volleyball team filled the school’s football stadium for an early-season match. It exists, too, in the surging popularity of women’s sports and on the first week of every February on National Girls and Women in Sports Day, which was founded in her honor.

Ruth Nelson, who coached Hyman at the University of Houston and also was an assistant coach on the Olympic team, remembers former USA Volleyball president Robert Lindsay saying Hyman “was the one person [most] responsible for the rise of women’s volleyball.”

“I call her the ‘Queen of Volleyball,’” Buck-Crockett said.

A pioneering force

Hyman’s parents always taught her to be proud of her height, and they encouraged her to use it as an advantage. People assumed she played basketball, but the New York Times wrote she fell in love with volleyball while playing it with her sister on the beaches around Los Angeles. She starred at Inglewood’s Morningside High and played one year at a community college before winding up on the national team, when Nelson asked Hyman to play at Houston.

Hyman blossomed there, charming teammates with a big laugh that rolled across the practice courts. She was always up for doing silly things such as sneaking fast food into matinees at movie theaters. She hated to work hard but practiced for hours, believing that if she got better, everyone else would as well.

Hyman refused the one scholarship Nelson had to offer, insisting that it be shared with all of her teammates, even though she needed the money. She loved learning; she majored in mathematics and physical education. Once, on a volleyball trip to Hawaii, Nelson asked Hyman whether she wanted to try surfing lessons, only to see Hyman a few hours later perched on a longboard, slicing through the waves.

“She was so calm when she spoke,” said Rose Magers-Powell, another U.S. teammate.

Still, she was competitive enough that she would change the rules of Hearts, the card game, to make sure she always won.

One of Nelson’s favorite memories is of an exhibition volleyball match in which players from the Houston Rockets and the Houston Oilers played against the U.S. women’s team. Robert Reid, the Rockets’ 6-8 forward, bragged that he was going to do a 360-degree spin and “dunk” the ball over the net.

“Flo [returns] the ball, and it comes back twice as fast in his face,” Nelson said. “I looked at him and said, ‘Mmm hmmm, you going to try that again?’”

Reid did not.

All of this made Hyman a perfect fit for the national team’s new coach, Arie Selinger, a Poland-born, former Israeli volleyball player who told stories of American soldiers rescuing him as a child from a Nazi death train. To that point, the U.S. women’s volleyball team had competed in just two Olympics, finishing poorly in both. Selinger was determined to change that by running long, grueling practices until the Americans caught up — which they did by the late 1970s, rising to a top-three team in the world.

Then came the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games, which killed their dreams of an Olympic medal. Hyman was picked to be part of a small group of American Olympic athletes to meet with President Jimmy Carter and beg him to change his mind. Despite the disappointment of not going to the Olympics, Selinger, Hyman and much of the rest of the team stayed together for the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

The decision was worth it: The L.A. Games were the highlight of Hyman’s career. For the first time, she was featured on American television, and the country finally got to see what the volleyball world already knew: Hyman was a star. The Americans stormed through the preliminary and semifinal rounds, dropping just three sets before a 3-0 loss to China in the final, a bitter defeat to a foe they had beaten in the preliminary rounds.

“There’s no fault. There’s no crime in not taking the gold medal. The U.S. never had one in the first place,” Hyman told the Associated Press after the match. “I think we ought to be damn proud that we got a silver.”

Still, the Olympics made Hyman a celebrity, and soon after the Olympics she landed a role as a knife fighter aptly named “Spike” in an action film called “The Order of the Black Eagle.” She bought a condominium and a new car. There was talk about her becoming a broadcaster. She started speaking out about the lack of opportunities for women in sports. Two months after the L.A. Games, she went to Congress to push for legislation that would keep colleges from discriminating against female students.

Her future was bright, but first she had to return to Japan.

Unbelievable tragedy

Hyman had been going to Japan since 1977 as part of an arrangement in which top American players joined professional teams sponsored by big Japanese companies and in return those companies would help fund the U.S. national team. She was popular there. The announcers called her “Hyman-san,” and people loved to take pictures of her giant hands and feet. Friends said she enjoyed playing there.

But in the fall of 1985, she seemed off as she left for Kobe to play for the Daiei grocery chain team. She told friends she felt slow and sick. She wondered whether she had the flu. When other players flew home for the holidays, she stayed in Japan, hoping to get better.

One night, early in 1986, Magers-Powell, playing for NEC’s team in Tokyo, had a long phone call with Hyman, talking about their dreams for life after volleyball. Suddenly the line went quiet. When Hyman returned, she said she had felt sick for a moment.

Magers-Powell learned later that Hyman’s heart had started fluttering during that call. It was the first of several such sensations over the next week, but Hyman kept playing. Daiei had a big match against Hitachi in Matsue on Japan’s northwest coast. She didn’t want to miss it.

And yet there were more signs. On the bus ride to the game, Buck-Crockett, who played for the same Daiei team, noticed Hyman had fallen asleep, something that never happened.

“That’s strange,” Buck-Crockett thought.

Still, Hyman played well enough in the match. In the third set, Daiei’s coach subbed Hyman out.

She sat on the bench, beside her teammates, and shouted encouragement to the players on the court.

Then, without warning, she passed out on a trainer’s shoulder.

Buck-Crokett first thought Hyman had fainted.

But as she watched medics put Hyman on a stretcher, she grew worried. The match was still going on.

She had to keep playing. Under the stands, paramedics worked frantically to save Hyman.

They rushed her to a hospital, where she was put on a respirator, according to news accounts. Hyman, though, was already gone.

After the match, team officials told Buck-Crockett that Hyman had died.

Someone took her to the hospital, where she was brought to Hyman’s room and left alone with her teammate’s body.

“It’s a memory I don’t want to revisit,” Buck-Crockett said.

For several days, Japanese television stations carried reports mourning “Hyman-san.” Daiei paid to fly Hyman’s body home.

Buck-Crockett flew on the plane with some of Hyman’s family.

Daiei also paid for Hyman’s funeral at a church in Inglewood as well as a large white mausoleum in an Inglewood cemetery.

Reverberations of fear

Hyman’s death shocked and frightened the sports world, especially after an autopsy revealed her heart had been weakened by Marfan syndrome, a genetic condition.

Worries flew about a secret killer lurking in the bodies of tall, lanky athletes. Magers-Powell said she panicked every time her heart began to pound during a match.

Doctors started looking for Marfan in exams, and stories appeared of players being forced to quit sports after getting a diagnosis.

The Women’s Sports Foundation worked with other organizations and Congress to create National Girls and Women in Sports Day to honor Hyman’s career and activism.

The foundation also started presenting the Flo Hyman Award, giving it to a female athlete who made a significant impact in sports.

Tennis icon Martina Navratilova was the first recipient.

Later that year, “The Order of the Black Eagle” was released with Hyman dressed like someone out of “Mad Max,” clutching a knife — leaving several of her friends to wonder what could have been.

Would there have been more movies?

“I think Flo’s legacy would be that she wanted volleyball to be the best sport in the world for women,” Magers-Powell said.

“She wanted to be sure a lot of kids and a lot of girls who looked like us would be able to get the opportunity to play.”

Over time, memories of Hyman began to fade.

The U.S. team became a permanent power, never finishing with worse than Olympic bronze since 2008. The 1984 team no longer seemed special.

In 2004, sponsorship and funding changes led the Women’s Sports Foundation to discontinue the Flo Hyman Award.

National Girls and Women in Sports Day remains, but Hyman’s name rarely comes up anymore.

“Flo was the best player in the world,” Magers-Powell said. “…

They should know her and the history of the journey she took.

“She just disappeared very quickly. Maybe she wasn’t around long enough. She left way too soon.

I think maybe God said her work was all done and it was time for her to go.”