Lindsay Whalen isn't the most famous player on the U.S. women's Olympic basketball team. She's not the youngest or the flashiest, but over the past two years, her career has become the stuff of childhood dreams.
Whalen, who will turn 30 in May, was a basketball standout at the University of Minnesota from 2000-04, and she spent the first five years of her WNBA career playing for the Connecticut Sun. But two years ago, before the 2010 season, the Hutchinson, Minn., native was traded to the Lynx, where she went on to win a championship in 2011. Then on Friday she was selected to her first-ever Olympic team, and in the course of a year Whalen now has the chance to win a championship for her home state and an Olympic medal for her country. It doesn't get much better than that.
"Playing for the Olympics is one of the goals you have growing up, and playing for a gold medal is the ultimate goal," Whalen said. "Playing for your country and your home town, your state… is a huge honor."
Along with Maya Moore and Seimone Augustus, Whalen was one of three Lynx players selected to the U.S. women's team, which currently stands at 11 members. Although she's a veteran WNBA player, Whalen is a first-time Olympian, just one leader on a team composed of them.
That experience and leadership will be crucial for Whalen in the time leading up to the Olympics. With just four months between the announcement of the team and the start of the games, Whalen and her teammates have limited time to prepare and will have to rely on individual motivation to train. Luckily, the Lynx guard is familiar with many of her teammates from playing with them in the FIBA championship, and those relationships will help the team find its rhythm once it begins its limited Olympic training schedule.
"It's going to be hard work," Whalen said. "It's going to be hard practice to get ready and a big commitment and lots of unselfish play from everyone. There are great teams out there."
After spending the winter playing in the Czech Republic, Whalen will return to Minnesota this spring to prepare for the WNBA season. With the Olympics added to her schedule, the 29-year-old guard will have to take a slightly different approach to training and be cognizant of the added strain that the trip to London will place on her body.
Whalen doesn't yet know any details of how coach Geno Auriemma will divide playing time and construct lineups – after all, it was about 1 a.m. Saturday morning in the Czech Republic when she found out she'd made the team. She knows that she can play well with Moore and Augustus, but there's no guarantee that the three will play most of their minutes together. Whalen is aware of that, and she's interested to see how relationships on the court develop once the team begins to train.
"Once you get a different group of personnel, it gets totally different," Whalen said. "I think it's definitely great to have three of us that have now played together for a while and know each other, but again once we get into the camp and into the preparation it's going to be interesting to see how everyone's playing and what's best for the team."
But right now, all of that must seem like a long way away. It's been just hours since Whalen heard the news, since she learned she'd made the final cut for the first time in her career. She's talked to her family and gotten over the initial shock, but that's about it. Four years ago, Whalen watched from Minnesota and Connecticut as players she knew, women she'd played against, competed in Beijing. They won a gold medal and set a standard, and now that Whalen has earned her turn, she's ready to live up to the expectations they set.
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