BY DC CUEVA
As all of us are getting to enjoy watching The Challenge as a year-round offering once again thanks to various versions of the show that are seen on all three possible forms of television made available to the consumer in this new age: MTV, Paramount+ and CBS, there is reason for us to be into this show just as much as you have for the past two decades. But the idea of a spinoff of the MTV show isn't all new.
Several members of Team USA who have competed at the Olympic Games were also part of the Champs vs. Stars trilogy: Lolo Jones, Gus Kenworthy, Olympic champs Shawn Johnson and Lindsay Jacobellis, and the biggest star of the Stars side on a competitive basis & one who competed for her native Britain, Louise Hazel on CVP & CVS II. But this past week, one who competed with these Stars in the second leg of this series made headlines for a different reason: having to battle for her life, quite literally, in the streets of the city she calls home.
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| U.S. women's volleyball team celebrates gold medal at Tokyo Olympics (Getty Images) |
Even though volleyball was invented in the same part of New England that gave the world basketball during the 1890's, it wasn't until the world first came to Tokyo in 1964 that the sport joined the Olympic program. And it wasn't until twenty years later in Los Angeles that the U.S. would earn its first medal in that sport... and in fact they would take two on home soil, not far from the sandy beaches of Southern California that would later have their own brand of Olympic volleyball to call their own. Indoors in Long Beach, the U.S. men swept Brazil for their first gold medal and went on to repeat four years later over a Soviet team that boycotted the L.A. Games. The American women also made it all the way to the gold medal final, but they were were swept by China in the title match as the nation reemerged from three decades away from the Olympic arena.
As the U.S. has no professional indoor volleyball league unlike other nations, that post-college scenario forced her to play in overseas in Puerto Rico and later in Europe, China and Brazil. But Glass' stellar college career convinced USA Volleyball that she would be a perfect fit for the women's national team, and she was chosen in time for Team USA's campaign for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In her first year with the national side, Kim was part of the FIVB Women's World Cup where the Americans earned both bronze and Games qualification, plus multiple double digit scoring matches on the Grand Prix circuit. The following August, she was part of the American women's team that made the final but was beaten in four sets by Brazil which won its first women's Olympic gold... and she stayed on the national team for the next Olympic cycle where the U.S. won the 2011 World Cup but again settled for silver in London... and in between, Kim also appeared in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue.
When the events of what happened to both Simone Biles and Mikaela Shiffrin the past year along with the Russian figure skating circus in Beijing, it brought into focus the internal battles many Olympic athletes have gone through both during the Olympic fortnight and before and after the Games when it comes to their mental health. Glass has also gone through her own similar experience: shortly after she retired from playing professional volleyball, she had to endure a stage in her life where she was homeless. It was that ordeal in mind that when she was chosen for Champs vs. Stars back in fall 2017, she chose the organization Covenant House as the beneficiaries of her efforts as her competing charity, and its mission has been to help homeless youth. Kim competed there along with Shawn, T.O., Michelle Waterson and others that winter, but had to endure the Champs' near-perfect season... and she was almost chosen for the final challenge -- only a coin toss that didn't go her way prevented a finals trip.
And then, there was what happened to Glass last weekend: last Friday after having lunch in a downtown L.A. restaurant, Glass and a friend were talking when she saw a man on the street with what is reported to be a metal pipe. As she recounted in a first-person account posted on Instagram a few days later, at first glance, it appeared that he was going to go after a nearby car but instead he and the pipe decided to go after her. She recalled, "This homeless man ran up. He had something in his hand... and he just looked at me. And as I turned to go tell my friend I think something's like wrong with him, and I think he's going to hit your car, before I knew it, a big metal bolt-like pipe hit me. He literally flung it from the street, so he was not even close to me at all."
According to Kim, bystanders were able to get hold of the man until the LAPD arrived to the scene of the crime and the suspect was led away in handcuffs on charges of suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. Later, criminal charges were filed by the L.A. County DA's office to the suspect, 51-year-old felon Semeon Tesfamariam, who faced a judge on those charges... but after bail was posted the one on the dark robe decided that it's best to have a hearing on his mental state next month before he could be formally arraigned on those charges. It's the latest episode in a series of similar violent attacks the suspect has been involved in dating back by four years.
The result of that brutal attack was several fractures around a right eye which was swollen and led to blurry vision in the days after. Many of her fellow former volleyballers, those from Challenge Nation and USA Volleyball all sent well wishes to Kim, who has also joined in the dialogue demanding change following the attack. And below, her full Instagram post.
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