BY ANN CIPPERLY
FOR THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA — While Reita Clanton didn’t have the opportunity to participate in organized sports growing up in Opelika, and never heard of team handball until she was 22 years old, she was part of the 1984 USA Women’s Olympic Handball Team. She was also an Olympic coach in 1996 for the USA Women’s Handball team. Currently, Clanton is an assistant coach for the inaugural USA Team Handball Wheelchair National Team, which was formed in Auburn this summer, with Dr. Ford Dyke as the head coach.
When Clanton was 7 years old, her family moved to Opelika from Roanoke. Clanton said she has loved sports, especially sports played with a ball, for as long as she can remember. She grew up in Opelika in the 50s and 60s when there were not any organized sports for girls.
“While I didn’t have any organized opportunities when I was growing up,” said Clanton, “I grew up in a great neighborhood with lots of kids, and the playground was our social hub. With a little imagination we could transform it into the field or court we needed to play whatever sport was in season. We learned from each other, and we had a lot of fun. It was really a wholesome and healthy environment for growing up.”
After Clanton graduated from Opelika High School in 1970, she attended Auburn University. In 1972, sports changed for women with Title IX, which was part of the Education Act of 1972, which stated any extracurricular activities in education offered for boys had to be offered for girls as well.
Clanton said she remembers there was a group of dedicated women navigating the changes after Title IX, including Sandra Newkirk, Aletha Bond, Susan Nunnelly and Jane Moore.
“That group made sure those of us at Auburn at the time were provided the opportunity,” Clanton said. “They built a bridge to the future for Auburn women’s athletics.”
In 1972, Auburn offered volleyball, softball and basketball to women students, but there wasn’t any recruiting or scholarships.
“I was starved to try anything,” Clanton said. “I tried out for all three teams, and I was in heaven playing competitive sports for the first time in my life.” In 1974, she earned Outstanding College Athlete of America recognition.
When Clanton graduated from Auburn in 1974, she said she was thankful for her experience, but she thought her playing days were over. She got a job teaching at Glennwood School in Phenix City, and also coaching girls’ basketball.
“I thought if I couldn’t play anymore at least I could stay connected to sports through coaching” she said.
In October that year, Sandra Newkirk at Auburn University received a letter about the new Olympic sport of team handball, that would be an Olympic sport for women for the first time in the 1976 Olympic games. To assemble a team, letters were sent to colleges across the country in search of multi-sport athletes to recommend. Tryouts were being held at Iowa State University.
Newkirk contacted Clanton to see if she would be interested in trying out.
“My heart just about jumped out of my chest,” Clanton said. “I said ‘yes’ but had no idea what the sport of team handball was.”
Clanton said she had a dream since childhood of one day being in the Olympics. She remembers seeing the Olympic games on television.
“In the early 60s I was drawn to the Olympic Games, not any particular sport, but I could see and feel myself being a part of it. It seemed crazy since there were no opportunities for me to play sport, but it was a dream that was always in my heart. When Sandra Newkirk said the words Olympics, I said yes. It really felt like God was saying come on, try this.”
Clanton went to Iowa State in November for a week of tryouts.
“I get there and see this game that was every game I played on the playground rolled into one,” she said. “It was running, jumping, throwing and catching. I saw this awesome game and I felt like I had prepared for this opportunity all my life.”
There were about 60 women there with the same dream. A week later, the first national training squad of 22 women were selected with Clanton on the team.
In 1980, they were in the process of qualifying for the games, when the announcement came that the Olympics would be boycotted. In 1981, they reassembled a team, and Clanton was selected. At that time, she was coaching basketball at Middle Tennessee State University
After a lot of hard work, they had the first USA Team Handball Women’s National Team in two World Championships and the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
“It was a surreal moment,” Clanton said. “You spend so much time and work so hard being on the team. The defining moment of that experience was the opening ceremony. It was powerful in a lot of ways. We were the host country coming on the heels of the Olympic games we boycotted in 1980.”
As the host country, the USA teams are the last ones to march into the old coliseum in Los Angeles filled with about 100,000 people.
“I remember walking through the tunnels that are a little dark,” Clanton said, “and at the opening you can start to hear the music, to hear the crowd and see the light coming through. Then we just burst into the scene filled with color, light, music and the energy from the crowd. It was such an uplifting experience.
“The thing that impressed me as I was walking around, the track, was that almost every country in the world has at least one person represented in this coliseum and sports had done that,” Clanton said “The Olympic games temporarily brought the world together in one place to celebrate excellence and what is good about us as human beings. The Olympic games are a grand institution of sports, but more importantly, it is an institution of peace and goodwill with sport and culture bringing people together to celebrate our shared human values. I was so impressed with that.
“It was an inspiring, uplifting, life affirming experience, that to this day I can put myself back in the moment and appreciate,” Clanton added.
While the USA team handball team was seeded last, they upset China in their first game. They played West Germany for the bronze. The USA team lost by one point, finishing fourth.
“We were proud of what we had accomplished,” Clanton said.
When she returned home to her family, Opelika honored her with a proclamation from the city.
Clanton was an assistant coach for the USA Handball Team in the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta. In 1997, Olympian Clanton was inducted into the Tiger Trail of Auburn University.
In 2002, Clanton was asked to carry the Olympic Torch. That year she moved back to Opelika to be with her family. Clanton started a sports training program and taught at Lee-Scott Academy for a couple of years. In 2013, she began teaching at Auburn University.
Now, she is back working as an assistant coach for the USA National Wheelchair Handball Team.
“It is an honor and as a handball Olympian, I am excited to share this awesome sport with adaptive athletes.”
The core of the staff is at Auburn, and the training camps will be at Auburn.
“I am happy that as adaptive sports continue to grow in our country,” Clanton said, “that handball will be a part of that movement of lowering barriers and providing opportunity to this community.
“It is my first time working with adaptive sports athletes, but I am amazed and inspired at what I have witnessed and so privileged to be a part.”
