When the WNBA Utah Starzz went south to become the San Antonio Silver Stars for 2003, point guard Jennifer Azzi went with them but said she would keep her home in Salt Lake City.
Now two summers into basketball retirement, Azzi has kept that promise to an extent that probably even she would never have foreseen.
"Yeah, I seem to not be able to leave," said the 1996 Olympic gold medalist and 1990 NCAA Final Four MVP, Naismith and Wade awards winner who is a member of the USA Basketball board of directors through 2008.
Not that Azzi wants to leave Utah. "I love this community," she says.
And now, it's home for the whole Azzi family.
Her sister Susanne and Susanne's husband and 2 1/2-year-old daughter have lived a block away from Jennifer for a while, and a couple of weeks ago the Azzi parents moved from their longtime home in Tennessee to two blocks away from their daughter in Salt Lake City.
Azzi's mother just accepted a teaching position at Juan Diego. "They just happened to have an English position open," Azzi said. "It was really unbelievable. She just finished the school year in East Tennessee, and she was teacher of the year at her school."
Azzi's retired father also got a part-time job here. "They're getting older, and they just want to be near their family," Azzi said.
"Utah is just such a family place that it's great. The quality of life here is unbelievable," said Azzi, whose expertise at the point lifted the Starzz to their best seasons, and the WNBA playoffs, in 2001 and 2002.
"At first . . . my motivation to move here was because the team was here, but when the team left and I stopped playing, I realized I kind of have a great life in Utah," said Azzi, who keeps so busy she can't remember all her engagements but likes it that Salt Lake is a Delta hub that allows her to fly most places non-stop.
One week last month, she was in the Bay Area, where she played collegiately for Stanford and professionally in the ABL in San Jose, and then she went to Atlanta over the weekend to receive a "best new business" award she won for her Azzi Training from Overtime Magazine. The magazine specializes in news about businesses run by current and retired athletes.
"To win this award just kind of blows me away, to have that kind of national recognition for our company and our wellness days and our camps. It's great," said Azzi, who is joining former Utah Jazz player Thurl Bailey for a second year in putting on a youth basketball and life-fitness-skills camp at the Jewish Community Center on the University of Utah campus July 11-14. Contact the JCC to apply for the camp, (801) 681-0098, or via www.jenniferazzi.com.
The camp teaches proper techniques for heart-rate training, strength training, nutrition and ways to work on speed and agility. There will also be basketball instruction, and kids will play on teams.
Azzi and Bailey will work the whole camp, she said, and won't simply lend their names to it, as often happens with celebrity camps. "I don't feel right about that, and neither does Thurl," Azzi said. "I'll be there all the time. We're going to be very involved." There will also be guest instructors.
Kids from kindergarten through fifth grade will participate in the mornings, and sixth- through 10th-graders will get afternoon instructions, and there will be a nutritional class for parents, too.
Azzi says she may part ways here a bit with her mom, the English teacher. "I don't know that she necessarily agrees with me, but I think P.E. should be just as important as English and math and science because at the end of the day, if you don't know how to take care of yourself and you don't have your health, then what do you really have?" Azzi said.
"I think it's one of the most important things kids can learn at a young age. That's part of the motivation for our camp is underlying health concerns. In our day of inactive youth, why wouldn't you want your kid to be active?"
Azzi is spokesperson for PE for Life, trying "to raise money to get physical education back in schools. We were just in Washington, D.C., a couple months ago lobbying Congress for more money for physical education. That's kind of a sad state in schools. It's so important," she said.
She also is involved in work for the American Lung Association, traveling the country to lead "asthma walks." Azzi suddenly developed asthma in her third season with the Starzz. "It just sort of came on," she recalls, still puzzled why. At first, "I was embarrassed. I never took medication around anyone.
"I guess I've tried to turn it into a positive," she said about how she encourages others "that if you get the symptoms under control, you can live a happy, active, healthy life. I went on to play two more years in the WNBA and never missed a beat."
While she's busy with her training and fitness camps, walks, speeches and work for the WNBA — conducting clinics and writing a fitness column for WNBA.com — Azzi is learning to embrace her new life.
"Often people ask me if I miss playing. The one piece that I miss are my teammates. That was always the best part of the game for me. But at the same time, I'm seeing things for the first time. — like I'm gardening," she said with a laugh about her hailed-out attempt to grow one of her favorite foods, tomatoes. "I'm enjoying parts of life — I was focused so much on my sport — that I didn't see.
"There's so many great things to see and do. I've been hanging out with my niece — she's 2 1/2. I get to do things that I really just never did, so my life the last year and a half has been great," Azzi said.
"It's important for athletes to realize that it stops at some point. It was an easier transition for me because I had laid the foundation with a lot of other things. But at the same time, it's a whole different world. There are times when it's scary. But I'm excited too."
She does wish the Starzz had stayed in Utah. "I'm not bitter, but I wish the team was still here because I really think it was on its way. I'm not in management, and I'm not losing money every year, but it really felt like it was doing pretty well here.
"The hard part on a human level," she said, was having seen how the Starzz affected young girls. When she was first here, not many said they'd like to play college ball or sports in general. "Once we were more in the community and successful, I would talk to girls three years later, and they were so excited."
Azzi recalls parents telling her, " 'My daughter just loves basketball, and thank you so much for coming out here and teaching our kids.' It's those kinds of things that people don't always see that happen in sports," said Azzi, wishing that Starzz climate still existed.
E-mail: lham@desnews.com