Two Portsmouth Olympic stars honored by alma mater

PORTSMOUTH

From a hotel ballroom table Wednesday, Anthony Lee, an 18-year-old varsity athlete at Wilson High School, looked at Wilson alumni-turned-Olympians LaTasha Colander Clark and LaShawn Merritt and dreamed.

Lee wants to compete in the Olympic Games, too.

"It seems like if they can do it, anybody can do it," he said.

Lee and about 50 other Portsmouth public school students, many of them athletes, were among about 300 people, including business, city and school leaders, who feted Colander Clark and Merritt at the Portsmouth Schools Foundation's 2008 Distinguished Alumnus Awards.

The foundation, a non profit that raises money to help the school division, honored the homegrown Olympians not because they won gold medals but because they competed in the Olympics, Maureen Mizelle, the group's executive director, said.

The athletes received plaques and news that scholarships in their names will be awarded to Portsmouth students next year.

"Believing is achieving," Merritt said. "Whatever you want to do, you can get it done."

During the summer, Merritt won two gold medals for his track performances. In 2000, Colander Clark won a gold medal as a member of the 4x 400-meter relay team.

E arlier this year, however, Colander Clark and other members of that team were stripped of their medals because they ran with Marion Jones, who admitted using performance-enhancing drugs before competing in the 2000 Olympics.

Colander Clark has said that it's unfair she and other innocent athletes lost their medals. They have fought to keep them.

"I ran my race true, and I ran it natural," Colander Clark was quoted as saying earlier this year in The Virginian-Pilot. "I'll always be an Olympic gold medalist, and no one can ever take that away from me."

WAVY-TV 10's Bruce Rader, the keynote speaker, encouraged students to look up to the Olympians' example of character, focus and discipline. Even they lost at times, he said, but they used those experiences to get better.

"If you're smart, you will build your success on your failures."

Cheryl Ross, (757) 446-2443, cheryl.ross@pilotonline.com