AZ Azzi

Even though we graduated the same year, I can't say that I actually knew Jennifer Azzi, only that I knew of her. She's probably, I'd imagine, the most famous athlete to have graduated from Oak Ridge High, but I can't be sure.

Occasionally, I'd see her. One day, she showed up on the cover of a local TV guide, you know, the one published by the local paper. She had decided on a basketball career at Stanford. I wonder how much the calculus teacher (she also taught pre-calc) had an influence on that decision. She had said if Jennifer got into Stanford, she had to go.

To be fair, Stanford, of all big name academic schools, has often relaxed its entrance standards based on academics, which is why Stanford is competitive in many of the sports it participates in. It would struggle if it had to, say, meet the same standards as the Naval Academy or the Ivies.

Someone decided to make a documentary about the Stanford women's basketball team at about the time they won their national championship, and Jennifer Azzi played a big role in that. She'd go on to participate in the Olympics, then play professional basketball. These days, it appears, she runs a fitness center in Salt Lake and gives motivational speeches, which is perhaps par for the course for an athlete in a sport where millions are not showered on its star players.

Ultimately, it's public figures like Jennifer that embed themselves into the history of a high school. Who remembers star scientists or even successful businessmen or musicians?

I can think of a few others, I suppose, that went to our high school. Kai-Fu Lee was a cousin of someone I went to high school with, and he attended the same high school a few years later, eventually earning a Ph.D. at CMU, often regarded as the number 1 rated computer science department, then would have a career with Apple, then Microsoft, now Google.

Were there others that slip my mind or simply didn't take the classes I took or achieved fame but in relative obscurity? And why do I feel kinship with that? With people I barely knew? With people I merely shared a physical space with, and even that, probably rooms away?

I remember I was sitting in the principal's office, which was, I suppose, really the guidance counselor's room. There was another girl sitting there, and she was hoping she could be some kind of track star. How many people dream those dreams, not realizing how hard it is to achieve those dreams. What happens to those whose lives have been more difficult?

I don't often look back and think about these things, but occasionally, I think about how many other lives spent some time in buildings that made our high school, and how many paths diverged to do many different things, and how completely unaware I was while I lead my own life.