By Tom Nader

Publisher and Editor

Sometimes dreams don’t come true.

Inside her broken dream, though, Kim Kreiner still found her gold-medal moment.

One that showcased her determination and defined her character.

A moment stamped in time from 2008 in Beijing, China.

Kreiner, who graduated from Mogadore High School in 1995, was representing the United States of America for the second time in the Olympics. A dream in itself, of course, but her results did not match her hopes.

Competing in the javelin after also qualifying for the 2004 Summer Games in Athens. Kreiner admits that her nerves never adjusted to the magnitude of the event in Greece.

Leading into the 2008 games, however, Kreiner said she felt much more prepared both physically and mentally.

Or so she thought.

Just two weeks before the Olympics, she suffered an injury to her left foot that eventually derailed her ability to compete anywhere near her peak in China.

“At a competition right before the Olympics, the bottom of my foot was sore, and I didn’t think much of it other than it was a little sore,” Kreiner said. “But when I went to push off for one of my throws, I felt a pop in my foot. It felt like I had stepped on a large pebble.”

From that point forward, Kreiner did not throw or work out aggressively. Instead, she tried to carefully manage the injury, with a goal to heighten her chances of being healthy and recovered for the Olympics.

Then came her time to throw on the world’s brightest stage.

As she ran down the runway and planted her foot firmly to prepare for her throw, she felt another pop.

Kreiner remembers the throw was decent, but the pain in her foot was all too familiar. It was the same that she had felt just a couple of weeks earlier.

She was later told that she had torn the plantar fascia off completely off the bone in her foot.

Despite being reduced to a one-legged athlete, Kreiner was determined to complete what she had trained her entire life for.

Kreiner noticeably limped down the runway for her final two throws. She had no power, and she was unable to compete with the world’s elite.

At that point, the competition had shifted.

It was less about competing against the best in the world and more about competing against herself.

That was a competition she knew she would win.

“There was absolutely nothing that was going to keep me from making those throws. Nothing in this world was going to stop me and nobody was going to tell me to stop,” Kreiner said.

It was her gold-medal moment.

And it did nothing to overshadow her illustrious career and everything to embolden it.

LIFE AS A KID IN MOGADORE

Kreiner is the middle child of her parents Steve and Debbie Kreiner. She has a sister, Jennifer, who is four years older and a brother, Steve, who is four years younger.

Steve worked at Goodyear and Debbie was the secretary at Mogadore Christian Church (now called My Community Life Church) that is located near Mogadore High School.

The family of five grew up on Prospect Street, moving to Mogadore from Akron when Kreiner was in the third grade.

Kreiner was always active, always on the go and always finding something to do.

Especially in the summer, when her and all of the neighbor kids would play outside from sun up until sun down.

“We had a big backyard, so we were always playing something. We were always outside,” Kreiner said. “We would play pickup football, wiffle ball, basketball … anything you could think of, we were probably playing that at some point in the backyard. We would come home for lunch, maybe, then be back outside taking a break only to get a drink from the water hose.”

Kreiner was immediately and always a multi-sport athlete. She played softball in the summer until high school and played volleyball, basketball and track and field as a middle-schooler and high-schooler.

In high school, she scored 1,193 career points for the Wildcats. As a senior, she placed in three events at the OHSAA state championships — second in both the shot put and discus and fourth in the high jump.

She may have missed her chance at being the best in those events in Ohio, but she was soon about to become the best in the nation in a different event.

KENT STATE AND FINDING THE JAVELIN

Despite an impressive high-school career, Kreiner was still looking for an opportunity to compete in college.

She walked on at Kent State and earned a spot on the team, but did not have a specific event.

That’s until Golden Flashes throwing coach, and four-time Olympian in the shot put, Ramona Pagel saw something that maybe nobody else did.

“Coach Pagel asked me to try the javelin. I guess she felt like my athleticism and build would be a good fit for it. She was really the one that guided me toward the javelin,” Kreiner said. “I figured I would just try it out and see how I did.”

The answer to that came quickly.

At Kreiner’s first meet, with only brief training, she threw 115 meet. By the second meet, her distance jumped to about 145 feet.

“I was enjoying it, and I really picked it up quickly,” Kreiner said. “It was something different. I had seen it on TV and knew what it was, but I had never done it before. I could tell as I kept practicing and training that I was getting the hang of it.”

So much so that Kreiner even began correcting herself or improving her technique before the coaches had an opportunity to.

“I remember a few times the coaches would ask me, ‘How did you know to do that?’ I would tell them that it just felt right,” Kreiner said. “You learn how your body moves and how it works and that is what helped me self-correct to get the stick to go farther when I threw it.”

It wasn’t long before she was throwing it farther than anyone else.

AMERICA’S BEST JAVELIN THROWER

Kreiner became a four-time national champion, winning the United States Outdoor Championships in 2001 and a three-peat in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

She held the United States record in the javelin for nine years from 2002 to 2010, with her best throw being 210 feet, 7 inches.

Her success at Kent State is what opened up her thoughts to the opportunity to pursue competition on the world’s biggest stage in the Olympics.

“I wanted to go after it,” Kreiner said. “Track and field athletes have a very short shelf life, so I felt like I wanted to give it my best shot. Why wouldn’t I? Once my distances started getting up to 170 and 180 feet, I started to think to myself that I could possibly make an Olympic team. At the end of my senior year at Kent State, I asked coach Pagel if she would be willing to continue to coach me after college, so I can try to make those teams and she agreed. I think she saw it, too, but did not want to push it onto me if I didn’t want it. Once I showed interest, we both committed to it.”

From there, the disciplined training started, but with balance.

Kreiner often would train hard in the mornings, break away in the afternoon to either work, coach alongside Pagel at Fresno State University or pursue credits toward obtaining her Master’s degree, then she would return in the evening for another training session.

To qualify for the 2004 Olympics, there was plenty of pressure on Kreiner’s shoulders because she had to win the Olympic Trials or else the opportunity would pass her by.

It came down to just six throws, but the conclusion was a first-place finish for Kreiner and an emotional berth to the Summer Games.

“I was ecstatic, and I remember running over to my coach and hugging her. I had her call my parents, because the athletes are not allowed to have phones,” Kreiner said. “I don’t think that it really hit me that I was going to the Olympics until I went through all of the team processing. After I won, then after the drug testing, trying on the Team USA uniform to see what size you are, that is when it hit me. I remember thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I really made it.’ There were all types of emotions that were going through my mind. I was looking back at myself in a mirror wearing that USA track and field uniform. There is no other feeling like it, and I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

“There is no way to describe how proud you are of yourself at that moment,” Kreiner added. “The idea that you just spent the last four years of your life torturing your body, pushing it beyond its limits, working your butt off and the real thing about it is that those four long years of training and everything comes down to six throws. It all comes down to about one-and-a-half hours, which is crazy.”

At the 2004 Olympics, Kreiner placed 39th in the world. At the 2008 Olympics, Kreiner placed 38th.

“My experiences may not have gone the way I had hoped that they would, but being an Olympian is something that they can never take away from you,” Kreiner said. “There is no such thing as a former Olympian. Once you are an Olympian, you are always an Olympian.”

COMING BACK HOME

Kreiner is a health and science teacher at Mogadore High School and has also served as the Wildcats’ track and field throwing coach since 2017.

Her athletic background and experience would seemingly give her the resume to pursue coaching at any level.

Where her heart wanted to be, though, was back home.

With the community that supported her so strongly throughout her formative years and on through her college and professional careers.

She was ready to give back to the place that had given everything to her.

“Sometimes it is not about going bigger,” Kreiner said. “I wanted to come back home to coach and to teach. I wanted these kids to see, and push them to let them realize that even though Mogadore is a small school and a small community, you can still accomplish big things. It is all about setting goals and how you work toward them.

“Don’t limit yourself. Aim big. It doesn’t matter where you come from. What matters is what you want to do,” Kreiner added.

For Kreiner, she has always proudly been from Mogadore, Ohio.

She wanted to compete to see what was the highest level she could reach and found out that she became the athlete that set the bar for everyone else to chase after.