Anna Mapes just wants to finish what she started.
Conventional wisdom says success stems from moving forward instead of backward. But returning to college to play volleyball with her 18-year-old teammates gave 30-something Mapes the clarity of purpose that drives successful comebacks.
“In life, you have to take a few steps forward, evaluate things and then take a few back before you move forward again,” says Mapes, now 31 and married with two young children, earning her degree in civil engineering at Metropolitan State College of Denver. “Being back in school again, this whole process — it’s been about growing as a person.”
Sportswomen of Colorado will honor Mapes and dozens of other athletes — from high school champions to Olympians — before finally announcing Colorado’s Sportswoman of the Year at their 36th annual banquet Sunday. The dinner raises money to send girls from 8-year- olds to eighth graders to summer sports camp. This year honorees include a larger group of older women, some athletes well into their 60s, recognized for their physical and mental feats.
“Someone asked me while watching a DU women’s team play tennis if I could hit the ball that hard when I was playing years ago,” says Joan Birkland, executive director of Sportswomen of Colorado. Birkland answered the question with a resounding, “No way!”
“The performances are so much better now than when I was an athlete playing tennis and golf in the 1960s,” says Birkland, noting the impressive upper body strength women achieve with today’s weighlifting and training regimens.
Mapes’ nomination lists numerous accomplishments, including making Third Team All Conference and leading her Metro volleyball team as group “Mom” to the Sweet 16 bid for a national championship.
But it is Mapes’ journey back to collegiate volleyball after overcoming an eating disorder, as well as balancing motherhood and full-time studies, that has earned her this year’s Sportswomen of Colorado Comeback honor. She will finish her last semester of eligibility as a Division 2 starter for Metro in the fall.
It’s not common to see older volleyball players across the country, says Debbie Hendricks, Metro’s head volleyball coach. Division 1 allows only five years of eligible play time and restricts age of players to 25. By that age, most bodies can’t take the daily demand on the joints and muscles required by training and playing at the volleyball college level. Plus, most students who have played the game since high school move on to careers and raising families after they graduate from college.
Against the odds
Family emergencies or injuries may stall a player for a year or two. But to be gone for 10 years and then request to come back, as Mapes did at 28, is rare. Hendricks says most athletes don’t feel they have the opportunity or the physical ability to make a comeback. (Not to even mention the incredible changes that take place in a woman’s body after she’s had two children.)
“But Anna felt like she had unfinished business and wanted to finish her degree and her playing career,” Hendricks says. “People may feel the same way about their own lives or experiences, but they don’t have the same intrinsic motivation to make it happen.”
In 1998, Mapes was an 18-year-old Division 1 volleyball player on scholarship at the University of Mississippi. She played for two semesters, but her athletic prowess and “normal” weight hid a secret eating disorder she had been living with since her high school senior year. A goal to be in the best shape as possible for collegiate sports turned into an obsession with weight, diet and workouts that overwhelmed her.
“I was slowly losing control of everything in terms of my life,” says Mapes. “You lose touch with your friends and family, or even wanting to be the best athlete you can be because all that matters is working out.”
Risky behaviors such as restricting her diet and running 3 miles at midnight left her too tired to attend class at 8 the next morning, so she left the university in her sophomore year to seek treatment for the disorder that had sidelined her athletic and academic career. She spent the next three years recovering, first in a residential treatment setting and later followed by outpatient therapy.
When she met her future husband, Mapes was 25 and venturing back into the volleyball world as a high school club coach. After they got married, Mapes and her husband moved to Durango, where she became an assistant volleyball coach at Fort Lewis College. Her daughter Ava, now 5, was born, followed by little brother, Liam, now 3. Recovering from her eating disorder helped her shift her focus to new opportunities, she says.
“I thought my playing career was through,” Mapes says. “I was moving on with my life, and coaching gave me a way to stay involved.”
A smarter player
But the coaching and her maturity made her a smarter player, while her regular fitness routines and sessions with a personal trainer kept her in shape. Being a mother encouraged self-reflection and helped her understand what she wanted to represent to her kids.
“I kept thinking about life and not wanting to have regrets,” she says. Division 2 volleyball without age limits was her way to fulfill her goals. While her husband supported her decision to return to collegiate games, her mom thought she was crazy leaving two children without a full-time mother.
“I told her that not many people get a second chance at doing something they really love,” says Mapes. “It’s not that I made a mistake by leaving when I was 18. I did the right thing for my health. Now I have the tools, the mind frame and the support to meet my goals.”
What about motherhood? Mapes says a happy and more fulfilled mom makes for happier children. A thorough search among colleges that would fit her needs and circumstances eventually brought her to Denver and Metro State.
Juggling being a parent, a volleyball star and a full-time student is enough to trigger the kind of stressful environment that contributed to Mapes’ eating disorder in her teens. A drive for perfection and the societal pressures on all women, and especially athletes, to maintain a specific body type, exacerbates Mapes’ potential to backslide.
“But Anna has channeled all of those things and has found other means of measuring herself,” says coach Hendricks, who is aware when the workload has overwhelmed her team leader. “She has to have a time out with herself and say, ‘Listen, I’m doing a lot here to the best of my abilities, and I need to cut myself a little more slack.”
The benefits of age have given Mapes a better awareness of her physical and mental strengths and weaknesses, making her a savvier volleyball player now than she could have been as an 18-year-old. Even a season- ending strained ankle the semester of her comeback and a concussion from a car accident did not stop her.
“When you are older, you face all of these different life experiences, and you learn how to power through,” says Mapes.
This fall will be Mapes’ last season as a collegiate volleyball player, based on Division 2 rules. She hopes to win a national championship with her teammates and finish her degree the following year.
She says the Sportswomen of Colorado award will give her the chance to share her story with others struggling with an eating disorder and questioning if they have accomplished all they wanted to do.
“Recovery is not a magical switch that you turn on one day and everything is better,” says Mapes. “But you can change your life. It takes a lot of time, even more hard work and believing that it will.”
Sheba R. Wheeler: 303-954-1283 or swheeler@denverpost.com.
Sportswomen of Colorado’s 36th annual awards banquet
7 p.m. Sunday
Marriot Denver Tech Center Hotel.
Keynote speaker: Olympian and CU national champion runner Jenny Barringer.
Tickets $50. Details at , 303-331-0376.
The Sportswoman of the Year will be announced, and 10 honorees will become members of the Sportswomen Hall of Fame for receiving three awards in the same sport or special awards category over the years. This year’s inductees are:
Gretchen Bleiler, snowboarding
Christine Bullard, special awards
Caroline Cryer, lacrosse
Kim Eaton, golf
Danielle Foxhoven, soccer
Jessica Lopez, gymnastics
Diana Lopez, basketball
Lauren Miller, field hockey
Cindi Toepel, masters triathlon
Lindsey Vonn, skiing
