Benefield: Maya DiRado happy to leave swimming on top

Moments after Maya DiRado won her second gold medal in Rio, Santa Rosa Junior College swimming and diving coach Jill McCormick called it the 25-million-dollar question: Will the Santa Rosan really retire from swimming after captivating America at the Olympics?

DiRado gave a pretty simple answer Thursday to the “What’s next?” question.

“A puppy is the next step,” she said, her medals gently laid on the ground near her feet.

No more swimming.

DiRado, a 2010 graduate of Maria Carrillo High School, seemed at ease with her decision. As at ease as she could be in front of more than 1,600 excited Carrillo students who erupted when she strode into the gym Thursday morning wearing her four medals around her neck.

She sat in a chair among teachers and staff as a video of her dramatic win in the 200-meter backstroke played on a large video screen. The students erupted as if it were happening in front of them live when she touched the wall. In the gym, with all eyes on her, DiRado held her hands in front of her face when the screen showed her weeping as the national anthem played, the gold medal around her neck.

“Overwhelming” was a word she used a lot in her visit to her alma mater and later when she visited students at Piner High School.

DiRado has the right to feel overwhelmed.

In the space of two weeks, she has become, along with Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky, the face of U.S. Swimming. She won gold medals in the 200-meter backstroke and the 4x200 freestyle relay, a silver in the 400-meter individual medley and a bronze in the 200-meter individual medley. That’s a bigger medal haul from Rio than the entire nation of Norway. Or Ireland. Or Austria.

On Thursday, Santa Rosa Mayor John Sawyer gave her a key to the city. She is a bonafide star.

And still, she’s done.

She called the heavier-than-they-look medals her “pretty little ponies” and laughed that she sounded like a wind chime when she walked while wearing them. She also confirmed that these four medals - and all that they represent - are enough.

“The way that I was able to go out - you can’t go out with a better taste in your mouth than that,” she said.

The way that she went out was with a stirring come-from-behind victory over race favorite Katinka Hosszu in the 200-meter backstroke - a race Hosszu was leading the entire way, until, say, the last meter.

“I’m not winning until the last stroke. There’s no reason to think I was going to win,” DiRado said.

Until she did.

When asked what she was thinking, she smiled.

“This is my last race and I’m fighting for a gold medal, how much fun is that?”

But DiRado made special note of the times that dedication to her craft were not as fun - the missed parties, the times she had to skip sleepovers because of morning practice. She talked about the hilariously caloric lunches her mom, Marit, would pack to sustain her twice-a-day workouts. She talked about fighting fatigue and managing her precious time.

“High school is hard. There are a lot of things pulling at your time,” she said.

Break and lunch were sometimes spent catching up on schoolwork instead of catching up with friends. Sometimes she wondered - even when the Olympics were not her goal - if it was all worth it.

Then she laughed and looked at the four heavy medals around her neck.

“Why am I doing this? Now it’s like ‘Oh, yeah,’” she said.

“Amazing things await if you are able to sacrifice a little bit now,” she told the students.

That focus propelled her to the highest highs in her sport.

And while she didn’t always like swimming, she always had a love for it.

“It’s OK to care. It’s OK to have something you feel passionate about,” she told the students, hordes of whom stayed after her talk to get autographs and selfies with the swimmer. She made time for all of them until they were shooed back to class by school officials.

It was an interesting scene, considering that DiRado was ready to hang it up in 2014 after her very successful run at Stanford.

Her degree in management science and engineering in hand, DiRado says she was ready to move on. But her coaches and family thought she hadn’t shown all she could do. They had to remind the extremely driven DiRado that “the real world will still be there” if she took some time out to train and see what she was capable of.

She told the Maria Carrillo students she was afraid to fail. What if it didn’t work out?

Then she reworked the question in her own mind.

“It’s not failing, it’s just working to see how good you can be,” she said.

Turns out, DiRado can be pretty darned good.

But it also turns out that this run, this experiment DiRado embarked upon to see how good she can be, is over. She’s ready for next. In this era of Brett Favre, Lance Armstrong and even Michael Phelps - guys who hung it up only to strap it on again - DiRado says that’s not in the cards.

She’s got a puppy hunt to conduct. She’s newly married. She’s got a new house in Atlanta to decorate. She’s got a job as an analyst at McKinsey & Company to start in a few months.

When asked what she would miss about swimming, it wasn’t the medals or the podiums or even the emotions of hearing the national anthem played for her. She mentioned bus rides with teammates, getting warmed up before meets with fellow swimmers - the little routines athletes go through that bind together practices and life and team.

Things came together better than she could have imagined.

“To be able to peak at 23 and have the best year in my life as far as swimming?”

She didn’t finish the thought, but her point was clear.

She’s got nowhere else to go, nothing else to prove.

Outside of the pool? That’s another matter, another chapter.

You can reach staff columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com, on Twitter @benefield and on Instagram at kerry.benefield.