Logan Tom has done pretty much everything when it comes to volleyball.  After growing up in Utah and Hawaii, she went to Stanford and became a four-time All-American. In 2001, she led the Cardinal to an NCAA championship.  Her professional career has sent her from Brazil to Japan to her current team in Turkey, and even to the beaches in the USA. In 2006, Tom played professional beach volleyball.  Tom, whose father, Mel Tom, played for the NFL's Chicago Bears and Philadelphia Eagles, is expected to be named to her fourth Olympic team.  There she'll take a shot at the one thing that's missing in the 31-year-old's illustrious career: an Olympic gold medal. The U.S. finished fourth in Sydney, tied for fifth in Athens and second in Beijing.  Tom and her U.S. teammates are coached by Hugh McCutcheon, who guided the U.S. men's volleyball team to Olympic gold in 2008. The American women are ranked No. 1 in the world, taking the top spot from Brazil, the reigning Olympic champions.  But volleyball isn't the only thing Tom does well.  I can burp with the best of them. That's for damn sure. I try to keep it under control. It kind of freaks some people out. But on my good friends I let loose.  I can suck air and do it, but it's definitely better if I have beer to go with it.  Meile Lei. It's my Hawaiian name. Pretty much it means daughter of Meile. Meile was my dad's Hawaiian name.  I spent summers there. My parents are split, so I'd spend school year with mom and then summertime with dad.  When you're a kid you have all this time off. Now, I pretty much work. I go from professional season to national team season to professional season. I mean we stay in touch with the family there, but I haven't actually been to Hawaii in a long time.  When I first started playing overseas it was hard to get used to. I think the biggest thing is everything here is so accommodated for us, just with the stores, the Targets, the Walmarts. Overseas, a lot of them, especially when I played in little towns in Italy, they have their specific little butcheries for the meats and their little cheese stores and stuff like that.  The roads, my God. The roads are so small overseas compared to the open highways we have here in the city. Stuff like that, you don't actually realize.  I walk a lot. I try to kind of see the culture. In Istanbul, it's nice for me because I kind of live by the ocean, so I go out by the sea a lot and just kind of chill there.  I had been playing non-stop for such a long time, since I was 15, 16 with the national team, that I was a little burned out and I wanted to try the beach. Or at least have some fun. I guess with volleyball and the beach, it's pretty much at home. I grew up on the beach in Hawaii, and I have a bunch of friends on the beach. It was a good time. I enjoyed it.  To me it's completely two different sports just called the same thing. Just mentally, emotionally, technically, they're very, very different.  There's been years where I call my mom, I'm like, 'I'm never playing volleyball again. Wah, wah, wah.' … Even if I've had a hard time with it, I've always found that love I've had for it. It's always come back.  The Olympic year it's definitely more predominant and in the forefront because it's pretty much the only chance we get to be seen by the public in the States. … You do more media events, you go to more tournaments where the kids will be and stuff like that. It's nice actually. It feels good, kind of like I can do some things more than just play the sport.  There's just such a different vibe in the four years. You've been training with the different group of girls. … For us, we had different coaches every single year so it's a different style of training. Girls come in and out all the time. Different spots for the Olympics. The actual Olympic spirit you can feel it, but a lot of it is different for me at least.  Losing any match is always disappointing. The gold-medal match you can imagine how much more that is. How I deal with things, emotional things, I give myself some time to separate from it so I can think with a clear head. Now I'm OK. It's almost four years later.
Logan Tom, a Stanford graduate who played with a Turkish pro team this year, is expected to make her fourth U.S. Olympic team.