I feel like where I am at 40, I’ve outworked those who are trying to beat me. I have to compete against a bunch of young, strong tall, guys who eat glass before they come to play you. The way I fight that is that I outwork them – Olympic volleyballer Jake Gibb
Jake Gibb is no stranger to disappointment.
He understands struggle, fear and loss. But the 40-year-old Bountiful native has a way of meeting challenges with a kind of flexibility and grace that has allowed him to turn roadblocks into guideposts, obstacles into opportunities.
While 2011 is what he calls his “hardest year,” Gibb began exhibiting his ability to persevere and adapt long before that.
Maybe it started with being cut from the basketball team at Bountiful High his senior year.
“Somebody from Davis High asked me to play for their team,” he told the Deseret News about a month before competing in his third Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. “I looked at it as a girls’ sport. There wasn’t much for men (in Utah).”
That experience whetted his appetite for a sport that would eventually do more than allow him a competitive outlet. When he returned from serving an LDS mission, he started playing two-man volleyball tournaments.
“Anybody can play,” he said. “I played with my brother, and we were doing well, moving up to (from one) division (to the next) fairly quick. In Utah we were playing for a couple hundred dollars, but it felt big-time.”
Even though he enjoyed what volleyball offered, he never saw it as anything more than a hobby.
“I didn’t imagine this,” he said. “But I liked any sport. I just liked competing.”
So when he graduated from the University of Utah in 2002, he made his wife, Jane, an unusual proposition. Instead of taking that job as a commercial loan officer that he’d lined up, he wanted to see just how far volleyball could take them.
“I thought I’d just go be a business man,” Gibb said, laughing a little. “But I just had this itch to go play professional beach volleyball. (Jane) said, ‘You’re kind of crazy, but let’s do this.’” They moved to California, and Jane Gibb got two jobs so her husband could see just how far volleyball could take him.
“There was no reason for me to think I could do that, but to her credit, she believed in me,” he said. “I think if I’d have married almost any woman besides my wife, it wouldn’t have worked out.”
Jane Gibb said that while it might sound crazy now, she understood her husband’s desire to chase a dream.
“I was an athlete growing up,” she said. “And playing a professional sport is a dream. I thought, if he has the opportunity to play a sport he loves, he should try.”
And, as both point out, there was a two-year expiration date on this dream-chasing experiment.
“I would say we knew pretty early on that he was going to have some success,” she said. “I didn’t realize that he’d make enough money to support us. I’d say that took the full two years.”
In 2004, he was named the AVP’s most improved player.
Still, the couple never imagined the full breadth and beauty of the dream.
“Olympics did not even come up in conversation,” Jane said. “I just never imagined in a million years. It’s a dream, I don’t know, it’s crazy.”
In 2005, he partnered with Stein Metzger, and Gibb said it was Metzger who really taught him how to compete internationally. They played in 14 AVP events, winning four, and giving the couple their first indications that the Olympics might be a possibility.
It was 2006 when Gibb partnered with Sean Rosenthal that the Olympics came into focus as a goal. The duo was so successful, they earned trips to both the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics. In each experience, however, the team narrowly missed the podium, finishing fifth.
It was, to be sure, frustrating to leave a second Olympics without a medal, especially because he and Rosenthal won the FIVB championship in 2012.
But Gibb had endured what he calls his “worst year” in 2011 and that was the prism through which he viewed almost everything in the wake of that year.
A drug test in late December 2010 revealed abnormal levels of a hormone in his blood that was often associated with steroid use. He was suspended by U.S. anti-doping officials, but then as he searched for the cause of the hormone, he found a sentence that both solved the mystery and upended his world.
“It was just one sentence,” he said. “It said (the hormone) was also found in men with testicular cancer.”
A biopsy confirmed the cancer, and while the ban was lifted, the expected chemotherapy threatened to end his quest to be part of the 2012 Olympic team. The roller coaster carried him back up when doctors told him that they’d been able to remove all of his cancer through surgery.
He and Rosenthal went back to playing volleyball and qualified for the London Games. Meanwhile, his wife found out she was pregnant with their first child just before he had surgery.
“Going through cancer and having my wife pregnant and giving birth while I was on tour, pursuing this Olympic dream,” he said in a video on his website where he talks about being a two-time cancer survivor. “It felt like a heavy load on my shoulders. It was a very tough year.”
The experience profoundly influenced him — and still does. In that same video, he talked about what it was like to become a father in the wake of battling cancer and competing in the London Olympics.
“The birth of my son, it was a game changer,” he said. “It was more impactful than I would have thought.”
The following year, Rosenthal decided he wanted to play with Phil Dalhausser, forcing Gibb to again adapt.
“I got dumped by my partner,” he told the Deseret News in July. “My partner that I’m having dinner with tonight, for another player. … It was a tough thing, but it was also a good thing.”
As one of the top players in the world, he had the option to choose to team up with almost any player in the country.
He chose California native and former BYU volleyball player Casey Patterson.
“I just saw a competitor and somebody who was a really special talent,” Gibb said. “We were both raised Mormon, so we have that connection, and we just have a lot of similarities. Our wives played volleyball together and our two sons are best friends.” Chemistry is critical to a successful partnership in beach volleyball, and Patterson and Gibb have found it. They’re seeded sixth in pool play, which begins Aug. 6 for them.
Gibb will be the oldest U.S. volleyball player at the Rio Games, but he said he feels like he has something as valuable as youthful energy.
“It comes from my father, how I was raised,” he said of his confidence in his ability to compete with men more than a decade younger than him. “With accountability and confidence. Preparation … I feel like where I am at 40, I’ve outworked those who are trying to beat me. I have to compete against a bunch of young, strong tall, guys who eat glass before they come to play you. The way I fight that is that I outwork them.” Jane Gibb said her husband’s ability to adapt is one of the things she admires most.
“He’s 40 and he’s as healthy as he’s ever been, stronger than he’s ever been,” she said. “I’m just really proud of him that he’s worked so hard and been so diligent. …It’s crazy.”
Of course, none of this would be possible without his ability to fight through challenges.
“He is a kind of go-with-the-flow kind of guy,” Jane said. “He takes whatever the obstacle is — changing partners, cancer, and just says, ‘This is what life has given me.’ He’s just a positive, happy person.”
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