Athletes, Part 2
Cammi Granato
Olympic gold and silver medalist, women's hockey
"My success in sports forced me to deal with AD/HD."
Cammi Granato scored more goals than any other player in the history of U.S. women's hockey. She led her team to a gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano and a silver at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City. She even skated her way onto the cover of the Wheaties cereal box. Yet, off the ice, Granato's life was a mess. As her fame grew, it got messier.
"My life began spinning out of control," recalls the Downers Grove, Illinois, native, who is now 35. "The number of voice messages and e-mails I received became overwhelming, I couldn't return them all. My bills didn't get paid. My house was a mess. I bought every anti-clutter book out there, but they just became part of the clutter."
For years, she blamed the chaos on mere forgetfulness. Then, in 2003, she heard a sports psychologist talk about AD/HD. The symptoms fit her perfectly. She consulted a doctor, who confirmed the diagnosis.
"I've probably had AD/HD my entire life," says Granato. "Growing up, my parents called me 'the Little Tornado.' But in a house with six kids, my behavior probably seemed normal."
On the ice, of course, Granato's frenetic behavior worked to her advantage. "The sport doesn't require a lot of thinking," she says. "You just react. You're in the moment. I was a natural at that."
Granato says it was a relief to realize that AD/HD was behind her inability to deal with day-to-day responsibilities. "I'd just assumed I wouldn't finish projects or return calls because I was lazy," she says. "Now I knew the cause, and could focus on solutions."
Determined to get her life on track, Granato arranged for her bills to be paid automatically. She consolidated her to-do lists into one document on her laptop and discarded box after box of outdated files. But on August 24, 2005, as she was getting her personal life in order, her professional life took a devastating hit: She was cut from the U.S. women's hockey team.
"It was a shock that I can only compare to a death," she recalls. "I went through a period of mourning. Suddenly, the outlet for all my energy, and the source of my self-esteem, was gone."
A few months before the 2006 Olympic games, NBC Sports called to ask Granato if she was interested in going to Turin as a sportscaster. At first, it seemed a bad idea. Being on the sidelines would be frustrating to someone whose life had been dedicated to playing hockey. And she worried that her AD/HD would get in the way.
"Sometimes it's hard to get thoughts from my head out of my mouth in a concise way," she says. Luckily, her husband, former hockey pro and ESPN sportscaster Ray Ferraro, proved to be the perfect coach for her new endeavor. "We'd watch hockey games together, and I'd practice commenting on them," she says. "He'd show me how to weed out the wordy stuff."
Granato had a great time in Turin. "Though I wasn't playing, I found myself feeling all the highs and lows of the game," she says. "It was nice to still feel that. I may never be the best sportscaster out there, but life isn't about being the best, with or without AD/HD. It's about meeting challenges, and doing the best job you can. AD/HD comes with certain strengths and weaknesses that have made me who I am, and I wouldn't trade that for anything."
Chris Kaman
Center for the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers
"If I mess up, I mess up. I don't let ADD bring me down."
Chris Kaman was diagnosed with ADD at the age of two. At four, he locked his babysitter out of the house so he could try his hand at cooking (fried Pringles with ketchup, anyone?). At seven, while playing outside his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he started a fire that grew out of control; the fire department had to put it out.
In high school, suspensions were common for Kaman. He was prone to talking out of turn and jumping from his chair. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, he would turn off the lights in the classroom.
Yet Kaman never considered ADD a problem. "Sure, it's been hard for me sometimes, but I don't dwell on it," he says. "People get so serious about ADD. I'm like, 'Hey, I have ADD, what am I gonna do?' To me, all it means is that my friends and family get to give me more crap. Parents of kids with ADD have to stay positive. Maybe your kid will be a little crazy, but you can't get down on him every time he messes up. Everyone messes up. That's life. But eventually, we'll come around."
If staying focused in class was hard, there was one school activity at which Kaman excelled: basketball. Averaging 16.2 points and 13.9 rebounds per game (which helped his team go 24-2 his senior year to reach the state quarterfinals), Kaman thought he could be even more effective on the court if not for his meds. He thought they made him lose weight and feel fatigued. "I was seven feet tall but only 200 pounds, so I'd get thrown all over the court. I couldn't hold my ground," he recalls. "Medication kept me from being as competitive as I wanted to be. Sometimes I'd skip my afternoon pill, but my coach would notice and ask me, 'Chris, did you take your medication today?'"
After winning a sports scholarship to Central Michigan, Kaman stopped his meds. He gained the weight he was looking for - and his grades improved. "College was a much better environment for me, since each block of classes was only two hours long, tops," he says. "In high school, you'd have to sit there for seven hours straight, and that's hard for any kid, much less one with ADD."
Still, there were problems for Kaman after he turned pro and joined the Los Angeles Clippers, in 2003. "The biggest challenges were the huddles, and remembering the plays the coach wanted us to do," he recalls. "I'd be looking somewhere else, and my coach would yell, 'Kaman, what did I just say?'"
To get through to Kaman, Clippers coach Michael Dunleavy adopted a new tactic - showing Kaman what needed to be done rather than telling him. "He found out I'm a visual learner," Kaman says. "Once, he was trying to explain how to do a left-hand drive off my right foot, and I just couldn't do it. Then he did it himself to illustrate, and I got it immediately."
The custom-tailored coaching - and Kaman's hard work - began paying off. Go to any Clippers game these days, and you'll see hordes of Kaman fans, or "Kamaniacs." Many wear blond wigs and fake beards in tribute to Kaman's scraggly appearance (he hasn't cut his hair in two years).
When not playing, Kaman, now 24, spends much of his time in his Redondo Beach, California, mansion, which is equipped with a pool table, a Ping-Pong table, and an archery range. He shares his home with a posse of three childhood friends, a Rottweiler named Tank, and a nameless python. He doesn't drink or do drugs; the only vice he admits to is speeding (he once drove his Porsche the wrong way down a one-way street at 180 miles an hour).
Does Kaman have second thoughts about revealing his ADD to his friends and fans? Never. "I'd rather people know I have ADD than just think I'm nuts," he laughs.
This article comes from the June/July 2006 issue of ADDitude.
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