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to her, I think the appreciation factor is just through the roof. I think she just had that moment where she’s like, ‘Man, these people are not going to forget me anytime soon.’”

For Beckie, bringing a gold medal back to her alma mater meant the world.

“My heart was so full when I was surrounded by those people,” Beckie says.

“It was really nice to be able to share that moment, especially with people who deserve a lot of credit for where I am in my career.”

When asked about the transformation he’s seen in Beckie over the years, from the fastest kid in Colorado, to a fiery straight-laced freshman, and now an Olympic gold medalist, Stone pauses for thought.

It’s a journey, he says, that transcends sports and gets to the very heart of who Beckie is.

“Losing your dad when you’re 7 years old, that’s tragedy. But she had to get through it, and the journey that followed made her who she is.

“And at any time, she could have shut it down. She’s got a great degree from Texas Tech, she’s super personable, and I think her job in communications would be immediate anywhere. But soccer is the path she chose, and continues to choose, and she’s been a raving success.”

Beckie’s life took another turn in April when she signed a three-year contract with Portland Thorns FC. To Stone, the choice indicates that Beckie has taken charge of her career path and – as usual – she is opting into a challenge.

“She could have stayed at Manchester City and continued to be an integral part of that program, but she wanted to come back and play here,” he says. “She could have asked to be on a team that doesn’t have the history of winning that Portland does, but she knew she was going into a team where it’d be harder to make a contribution – and she stepped right in to play right away.

“She deserves happiness. She’s worked hard. But she’s not done yet. I think this journey’s got many chapters left and a lot of stories still to tell.”

Beckie agrees.

“No one ever knows where they’re going to be when it’s all said and done,” the gold medalist says. “A lot of people start out with a dream and that dream develops and it turns into other things. My dream was to be an Olympic soccer player. If you feel like your dreams are just as crazy, I think that’s a good sign.

“I don’t really know where my path is going to lead,” she adds. “I see more challenges, hopefully, in my future because that’s how we continue to grow. But, you know,

PRAIRIE DOG TOWNS EVERYWHERE CAN TRACE THEIR ROOTS TO LUBBOCK.

If prairie dogs live in a zoo or park near you, you may well have stopped to watch the chubby rodents’ playful antics and hear their yipping barks. But you probably don’t know there was a time the animals were hunted, nearly to extinction, or that their survival is largely attributed to one pioneer on the plains of West Texas.

It was 1935. For 10 years, Lubbock resident Kennedy N. Clapp had read the headlines predicting the extinction of the black-tailed prairie dog. Ranchers saw them as pests whose vast towns defoliated the land, making it too barren for grazing, and whose burrows posed a risk to cattle, since a broken leg was a death sentence. To eliminate the threat to agriculture, representatives of the U.S. Biological Survey poisoned hundreds of thousands of the rodents. A professional cotton buyer, Clapp was intimately interested in the prairie dogs’ fate. After all, his livelihood was tied to the success of Lubbock’s agriculture. And personally, Clapp was an avid gardener; his home on 13th Street was known citywide for its rose garden. So, perhaps it doesn’t make sense that Clapp became the rodents’ biggest advocate – but he did. As the federal government was looking to wipe out the prairie dogs, Clapp was working to save them. Luckily, he was unusually well positioned to do so. As chairman of the Lubbock Parks and Recreation board, Clapp carved out a section of the newly established Mackenzie State Park for the creatures. With the help of a friend, Clapp trapped two pairs of black-tailed prairie dogs and released them into their new enclosure. The rodents went to work, making the area now known as Prairie Dog Town their home. They dug burrows and birthed one new generation of pups after another.

In 1937, the newspaper made the grim announcement that prairie dogs were almost extinct around Lubbock – but not in Prairie Dog Town. Within five years, it had become world famous and one of the major attractions of Mackenzie Park in 1963, the prairie dogs became not only the city’s chief tourist attraction but also its most appreciated export.

Clapp once said, “The man who gets the most out of life is the one who contributes most to his city and his neighbors.”

If that’s so, Clapp certainly got the most out of life.

Thanks to his efforts, prairie dog towns can now be found in zoos throughout the country – from Boston to San Diego, Minneapolis to Fort Worth, and everywhere in between.

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum offers prairie dog “adoptions.” The rodents are present in the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, in Washington, D.C.; at Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming; Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota; and even Pairi Daiza, a privately owned zoo and botanical garden in Belgium. And it all started here – as a true Lubbock original.