This is a proud and diverse group, with varying expectations.
THE ATHLETES who will represent New Jersey in the 2016 Olympic Games are a lot like the state they call home -- a proud and diverse group from different backgrounds and with varying expectations, but all with a competitive spirit to fight for a spot on the medal stand.
Some, like the international soccer star who played at Rutgers, you know well. Others, like the teenage boxer from Newark, you are certainly about to know. Still others, like the fencer who will become the first American athlete to compete in an Olympics in a hijab, can make an impact that goes far beyond the sports they love.
Team USA could have as many as three dozen athletes who have trained on fields and in gymnasiums across New Jersey when it marches into Rio de Janeiro this month for the opening ceremonies. Here are eight of the best.
SHAKUR STEVENSON
USA Boxing's great hope is a teen from Newark
Word spread quickly in Newark two days before Christmas. Shakur Stevenson was back in the city, just weeks after boxing his way to a U.S. Olympic Trials championship. And everyone wanted to see him.
His friends. His family. His supporters in the community. In the Boylan Street Recreation Center were dozens of friends (and a few polite strangers) from the Newark neighborhoods where the 19-year-old boxer grew up. They crowded around the ring as he shadowboxed for a few cameras, then waited patiently for selfies once he climbed out.
Just imagine, one seasoned observer was told, what the scene might be like if he comes home this summer with an Olympic medal.
"It would be one of the greatest athletic achievements ever for the city of Newark," says Larry Hazzard, commissioner of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board. "And, for that matter, for the state of New Jersey."
Not really. A sport that produced 105 American medals from 1904 to 2004 has just one in the past two Olympics, a stunning downfall. Stevenson, who is undefeated internationally at this young stage of his career, isn't just one of New Jersey's best hopes to win gold. He is carrying the weight of an entire sport in the United States when he heads to Rio, a role he doesn't fear but rather savors.
"When I was younger, I was watching the 2012 Olympics and they didn't do so well, and I decided that I wanted to be the one to put the United States back on top," Stevenson says. "I definitely plan to capitalize on this opportunity."
If he does, he'll do it with a smile and with his home city never far from his thoughts. He wore a black T-shirt with the words "Just a kid from Newark" in gold lettering on the back during his visit to the South Orange Avenue gymnasium. He trains in Colorado now, but his family -- his mom, stepdad and eight brothers and sisters -- all live here.
Would Newark have an official celebration if Stevenson takes home the gold medal? Given the way he has dominated the competition, it might be smart to start planning the parade route.
CARLI LLOYD
Embracing life as an international soccer star
Turns out, becoming one of the most famous female athletes in the world can be a little bit ... weird.
Like, for example, ending up on the New York Post's Page Six just because you ate at a Manhattan restaurant, or having Yankee star Alex Rodriguez wait around after a game just to get a quick photo with you, or finding out that someone changed your Wikipedia page to declare you president of the United States.
Oh, and that last one gets better. Because, when Carli Lloyd actually met President Barack Obama at the White House, he cracked a joke about it. "I guarantee Carli knows more about being president than some folks running," he said, and all Lloyd could do was laugh with the rest of her teammates.
This is what happens when you score three goals in the first 16 minutes of the 2015 Women's World Cup Final, with more than 25 million Americans watching. This is what happens when the third goal, a soaring parabola from beyond midfield, is almost too ridiculous to be believed.
The performance catapulted Lloyd, a Delran native and Rutgers grad, from under-the-radar status to bona fide superstar. She went from that stirring victory in Canada to a parade float in the Canyon of Heroes to one appearance and endorsement and awards ceremony after another.
And she hasn't stopped going since.
"It's been a challenge," Lloyd says. "Post-World Cup, there were great things that have come my way and, really, I just couldn't pass a lot of things up. That required more travel, more appearances, lots of time on airplanes, lots of time in hotels. And when you mix in our busy schedule with the national team, I haven't had many days at home."
Now comes the Olympics, where the 34-year-old Lloyd and the U.S. Women's National Team will be favored to take home gold. It seems as if it would be impossible for her to top her World Cup performance, until you remember that she scored the gold medal-winning goal in Beijing (2008) and London (2012).
"I've just been mentally kind of ... zapped," she says. Can Lloyd add to her fame with another incredible performance in Rio? If she does, at least she'll be prepared for the wild and, well, weird ride that follows.
JORDAN BURROUGHS
All he sees is gold ... a second time
What do you do when you achieve a lifelong goal at just 24? For Jordan Burroughs, the answer was simple: You make it happen again, only this time, you bring your young family along for the ride.
Burroughs, a Sicklerville native, is the best freestyle wrestler in the world. He became a huge story in London, not just because he dominated the competition en route to a gold medal for Team USA, but because he declared his invincibility to the world and then backed it up.
"My next tweet will be a picture of me holding that Gold medal!!!" he declared on Aug. 9, 2012, on social media, on a Twitter account so brazen it would make Joe Namath blush -- @alliseeisgold. One day later, he had that medal around his neck and $250,000 in his bank account thanks to a USA Wrestling incentive program designed to increase participation in the sport.
"A lot of people call it cocky, a lot of people call it confidence, but I (knew) I was going to win today," he said at the victory news conference, and the four years since have been a blur. He has become a spokesman for a sport that, unthinkably, was dropped and added back to the Olympics after lobbying.
But he's also become a husband and a father. Burroughs, 28, brings his wife, Lauren, and their 2-year-old son, Beacon, with him to most competitions and press events. The family welcomed a baby girl, Ora, in June, and while Burroughs says fatherhood has changed his life, it has not changed his goals.
He wants to be the best. Ever. "I have high expectations for myself, as an athlete, as a man, as an individual, and wrestling has helped me build a lot of character knowing that I have to remain humble but also fight complacency," he says.
"It's a difficult place being on top, because, for me, beating the Average Joe has nosignificance, but for the Average Joe beating me could be the biggest match of his life potentially," he says. "I understand that. I approach every match with that mindset, that this guy is trying to beat you and it will change his life if he does."
That's the thing, of course. Burroughs has a 108-2 record on the international circuit, so he'll be as close to a sure thing as there is in Rio. The wrestler with the bold Twitter handle knows a little something about seeing gold.
MATT EMMONS
A straight shooter who's hoping to shoot straight
He knew as soon as it happened. Matt Emmons was one shot away from a gold medal at the Athens Olympics in 2004 when he aimed his rifle from 50 meters away. It was a perfect shot ... on the wrong target.
"That'll make a hell of a story someday," he said then, and 12 years later, you could argue that few Olympic athletes have had a more fascinating story to tell than the 35-year-old Browns Mills native.
He has won three Olympic medals and missed out on two others on the final shot. The first one, in Athens, came with a nifty consolation prize: A female shooter from the Czech Republic offered him words of encouragement when it happened. They're married with three kids now.
"I've been through a lot on and off the shooting range over the last 12 years," he says. "I've had some wonderful ups and some heartbreaking downs. All of those things have enriched my life in one way or another and made me a better person and athlete."
Emmons isn't just talking about the failed final shots that, in many ways, have given him more attention that his victories. He was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2010, and despite the surgery and treatment that followed, still qualified for the London Olympics two years later.
Will he win a medal in a fourth Olympics? It isn't something many athletes have done, and if Emmons misfires along the way, he'll remember that his failures have shaped him just as much, if not more, as his successes.
"The things I have overcome have made me a much stronger and wiser person," he says. "I wouldn't trade that for any medal. My peers in the sport and shooting world respect me more because of how I've handled those misses. Far more so than for any medals I've won. I'm proud of that."
NICK DELPOPOLO
A judoka who never loses perspective
He spent most of last year dealing with one injury after another, and if that wasn't bad enough, he lives with the knowledge that most casual sports fans know him -- if they know him at all -- as the guy who got kicked out of the London Olympics for accidentally eating a pot brownie.
Nick Delpopolo, the top American judoka at his weight class, would have every right to be frustrated or even a little bitter. But then he thinks back to his childhood, when he was a boy named Petra Perovic, living in a dirty orphanage in Montenegro, in the Balkans, and that puts everything in perspective.
"I constantly stop and think about how lucky I am," Delpopolo, 27, says. "My entire life could be so different if, say, I were sleeping or cranky when my parents first visited Montenegro to adopt a child. I could be living an entirely different life in an entirely different world and no one understands that better than me."
Joyce and Dominic Delpopolo, a couple from Westfield, rescued him from that orphanage when he was 21 months old. He still feels guilty about the kids who weren't as lucky and, when he visited that orphanage with his parents in 2009, wondered what became of them. He even drove to his biological father's office, but decided not to reveal his identity to him.
"After the Olympics, I would like to revisit Montenegro," he says. "I would like to meet my dad, so that he could know what became of the son he gave up so many years ago."
He could begin with the story of the London Olympics, when he was expelled from the games after testing positive for cannabis -- a positive test, he says, that stemmed from a mistake. Dark days followed, and he is still amazed at how many people who he thought were friends turned their backs on him.
"After London, I think people assumed I would quit because that would have been the easy thing to do," he says. He did the opposite, dedicating himself to a sport that, while wildly popular around the globe, is foreign here.
He'll have to have the tournament of his life to make the medal stand in Rio. And if he doesn't? He'll think back to where his journey in life started and be grateful for the chance.
ROBBY ANDREWS
Four years of training for 1 second
Imagine a lifelong dream evaporating in 77/100ths of a second, and you have a pretty good idea of how Robby Andrews felt in 2012.
He had watched his first Olympics in 2000 with his father, just a 9-year-old kid from a Jersey Shore track-and-field family who had caught the running bug. He attended his first Olympic Trials eight years later in Eugene, Ore., with his father. He was a Manalapan High junior and knew he would spend the next four years training tirelessly to get on that track in 2012.
And, when he finally did, he ran a pretty good race ... but not good enough. He legs were ready, he says, but his mind was not. He finished in fifth place, less than a second from making the U.S. team and marching with an American flag at the opening ceremonies in London.
"Disappointed is the only way to describe it, really," he says. "It took a while to recover from that. To put everything you have into a 3-minute race and it doesn't go the way you expect it, you're left with a lot of questions."
The four years since have had plenty of highs and lows. Andrews, 25, one of the most decorated and successful runners in New Jersey high school history, saw his times nosedive in 2013 because of a hernia injury. He wondered: Was it worth it?
He briefly considered quitting the sport, but then got healthy and rededicated himself to his training. He topped the qualifying time he needed to be part of Team USA in August and then finished an impressive fourth in the World Championships in 2015. His Olympic dream was very much alive.
So now, Andrews knew he would find himself in the same spot. On the track in Eugene, the Olympic dream just over 3 minutes away. "I definitely try to learn as much from my mistakes as my successes," he says.
It's been a long four years to make up one second, but Andrews is ready.
IBTIHAJ MUHAMMAD
A fencer with a platform well beyond sports
It isn't very often that a fencer makes national news in this country, but Ibtihaj Muhammad did that this winter. And she did it with a statement that, to her, was just part of who she is as a person.
She qualified for the U.S. Olympic Fencing Team and made it clear that, yes, as a Muslim woman she would wear a hijab while competing. In doing so, she will become the first Muslim woman in a hijab to represent the United States at the Olympics, and without question, will become a huge international story.
She understands that gives her an important platform at this point in American history, when Muslims are facing discrimination or, even worse, an overt threat to religious liberties. She is not running from that. She is embracing it.
"I feel I've been blessed to be in this position," the Maplewood native says. "When I think of my predecessors and people who have spoken out against bigotry and hate, I feel I owe it not just to myself, but to my community to try to fight it."
Muhammad, 30, also hopes the attention will help set an example for young Muslim women who want to compete athletically. She chose fencing when she grew tired of the other sports she tried as a child -- be it softball or tennis or track -- because of the modifications she needed to make to the uniforms.
Fencing is different because its participants are covered head to toe in protective clothing when they are competing. So while she is on the piste, no one will know about her religious beliefs.
But if the world's seventh-ranked women's sabre fencer can get on the medal stand? Then, the entire world will see.
"I told her to bring home the gold!" President Obama said after praising her during a visit to a U.S. mosque in February. "Not to put any pressure on you."
For Muhammad, the pressure comes from within.
KELSI WORRELL
Swimming for gold alongside the greats
Kelsi Worrell pulled on the door handle to the black SUV once, then twice, then peered into the window. Her coach was supposed to be picking her up after a race this spring that, once again, featured an eye-opening performance from the swimmer who graduated from Rancocas Valley Regional High School in Mount Holly.
But why wouldn't the door open? "Not your car!" a voice called from behind her. "Not your car!"
The voice belonged to Michael Phelps, the greatest swimmer and most decorated U.S. Olympian ever.
She was surprised (and apologetic), but, at this point, no longer starstruck. Phelps isn't a celebrity to her any more. He is her teammate.
Oh, it took a while to reach that point for Worrell, a butterfly specialist who has quickly emerged as a gold medal favorite, despite just finishing her senior year at the University of Louisville. This summer, she was on a world-record-setting relay team with three swimmers -- Natalie Coughlin, Allison Schmitt and Katie Meili -- who she idolized growing up.
"Here I am, on a relay with them and, on the inside, I'm freaking out," she says. "But on the outside, I had to hide that."
Worrell, at 21, might be one of the new faces on the USA Swimming team, but that hardly means she'll be overwhelmed at the competition. She holds the American record in the 100-yard butterfly, breaking a 13-year-old record that Coughlin held and becoming the first woman to crack 50 seconds in the event.
Not bad for a swimmer who, as a 7-year-old, hated the cold water and early mornings that are a staple of the sport. She became, simply put, one of the greatest New Jersey high school swimmers ever, but even then, wasn't sure she was on an international level.
"I knew the odds. I didn't see myself in that group," she says. "It (wasn't) until I came to Louisville, I improved and thought, 'Okay, maybe I can do this.' "
She'll have a shot in Rio alongside some of the most popular American Olympians -- and, across 17 days in August, a diverse group of athletes from her home state.
Will Team Jersey win gold? We'll be watching.
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