In something I haven't seen since the first Gulf War veterans arrived home, entire towns turned out to send two Olympic athletes off to Beijing.
I covered U.S. Olympic women's soccer midfielder Carli Lloyd (above) in her hometown of Delran for the newspaper, and went to the parade in Haddonfield for the U.S. Olympic track team's Erin Donohue (below) on my own.
I joined hundreds of other South Jersey residents along King's Highway in Donohue's hometown snapping away. It seemed to me there were more cameras recording the scene than I'd seen at other parades there. Not just photographing their own kids, everyone looked like they really were trying to capture a historic moment.
Donohue's star-spangled send-off came just a few weeks after she earned a spot on the team in the women's 1,500-meter final. She rode on top of a fire truck along the same street she ran daily as a young girl.
After the parade, supporters poured out of the stands at Haddonfield Memorial High School to run around the track with her.
In Delran, Lloyd's send-off was even more small-town. An ice cream parlor named a flavor after her - Carli's Cake Batter Cookie Dough Kick - and the mayor gave her a key to the township.
She signed autographs for all the hundred or so kids, and their parents and friends lined up holding jerseys, posters and soccer balls and she posed for photos with everyone.
The Delran HS boys soccer team ran over after practice to see the player who has been described as "capable of spraying the ball to teammates or putting it in the back of the net herself." She was the MVP of last year's prestigious Algarve Cup after scoring in all four games in Portugal.
The U.S. Women’s National Team plays its first game before the opening ceremonies, with a Group G opener against Norway today in Qinhuangdao.
