Stephanie Brown Trafton is an Olympic gold medal winner, a volunteer coach for elite throwing athletes, an educator, and a married mom of two children. She graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 2004 with a degree in industrial engineering. That same year, she competed in the Olympic Games, placing 11th in the preliminaries and 22nd overall. At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Trafton won the United States’ first gold medal in the women’s discus since 1932 – and this was the first medal of any kind won by an American woman in the event since 1984. Also in 2008, she was honored with the Jesse Owens Award, USA Track and Field’s highest award to the Athlete of the Year. She was one of the few Olympic athletes to hold a day-job while training; using skills rooted in her undergraduate degree she worked as a project manager for a Sacramento firm and later became the Director of Operations for Track & Field and Cross-Country sports at Cal State/Sacramento. In 2012, Trafton had an eventful year, setting the American record in the discus and advancing to the 2012 London Olympics. Trafton now works as a teacher at Wilton Christian School in Wilton, CA. She is also a program manager for the National Scholastic Athletic Foundation.

Mary Lou Retton is one of the most celebrated Olympians of all time. Her iconic performance at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, when she was just a high school sophomore, is historic. She scored perfect “10’s” in the floor exercise and vault and earned five medals in individual, team, vault, floor and uneven bars. She was the first American woman to be honored with both the individual and the all-round gold medal in gymnastics. Born January 24,1968, in West Virginia, Retton’s talent was recognized early on, and her parents moved to Houston, Texas so she could train with Béla and Márta Károlyi, coaches for the great Nadia Comãneci. Having won more medals than any other participant at the 1984 Games, she was named Sportswoman of the Year and Amateur Athlete of the Year by the American press. She was the first female athlete to grace the Wheaties box, with General Mills stating that sales improved as a result! After her Olympic career, Retton worked as a motivational speaker and television commentator. She married and had four daughters. In 2023, Retton was diagnosed with a rare form of pneumonia. At the time she was living without health insurance, and her daughters were forced to crowdfund to pay for their mother’s medical treatments. When asked by USA TODAY why Retton wasn’t covered by medical insurance, her daughter said that she could not obtain affordable health care because of pre-existing conditions, which include “over 30 orthopedic surgeries, including four hip replacements. She’s in chronic pain every day.” The good news is that Retton continues to recover from her illness at her home outside of San Antonio, Texas.