This past August two young men from Coronado stood upon a platform with their teammates at the Beijing Olympics as Silver Medals were placed around their necks on behalf of their country.

Jesse Smith and Layne Beaubien received Silver Medals at the 29th Olympiad as members of the USA water polo team.

Feelings ran deep for the athletes as they stood upon that world stage, a huge portion of those sentiments being the thrill of victory, with a tiny tinge of the agony of defeat.

“It was absolute elation,” testifies Smith. “I experienced a surge of patriotism I had never felt so strongly before. I was so proud to be an American and part of Team USA.”

Beaubien concurs. “It is a beautiful accomplishment to bow and receive an Olympic medal, especially as a cap to our story as a team.”

That story goes back to the previous Olympics, in Athens. “In 2004 we fell short of our goals and it took me close to six months to even feel comfortable talking about any part of the experience,” Beaubien said. “This go’ round has been quite the opposite, even though I still have trouble digesting our final loss.

“When you take into account all the obstacles and adversities we had to overcome to stay together over the last quadrennium — loss of funding, four coaches in four years, players scattered all over Europe and at home unable to train and compete together — the fact that we were able to maintain the integrity of this group, to stay dedicated to the ‘good fight,’ to believe in ourselves makes the success this summer that much sweeter to those of us who have been around for eight years or more.

Beaubien confesses he was also overwhelmed at how close the team had come to gold. Seeded ninth going into the games, Team USA upset Croatia, seeded third, and played well against Hungary in the finals.

“I was totally shocked, bummed and dazed,” he admits. “It was really difficult to end that run with a loss. At the time I was overwhelmed by how close I had come to the gold, and the fact that I was not able to touch it.

“But the truth is that there are only a handful of guys who know what that Silver Medal really means and represents, and one of those guys is a very close friend of mine for life who grew up in the same town as me.”

That would be Smith.

Jesse Smith and Layne Beaubien played well in the Games. Beaubien, who describes himself as an all-around player, sometimes playing defender, other times attacker and playmaker, was the second leading scorer for Team USA with eight goals. Smith is a 2-meter defender or a center defender, meaning he guards the players closest to the goal, the most physical position. He scored “a few” goals during the Olympics, he reports, including two in the final game.

Beaubien is a 1994 graduate of Coronado High School and a 1999 graduate of Stanford University, where he attended on a water polo scholarship. Smith, a 2001 CHS grad who attended Pepperdine also on a water polo scholarship, remembers running into CHS water polo coach Randy Burgess on the city pool deck in sixth grade. “He gave me a water polo ball and the rest is history,” Smith said.

Water polo, said Smith, was then and is now a cool sport in Coronado. “It’s the coolest sport there is,” he says, adding that one of the things that made it so was that the older, established players were incredibly nice to younger players and “It was great to be accepted by such a fun group.”

The “fun” started on every day but Wednesday for Beaubien and Smith and their teammates a little after 4 a.m. when they’d hop out of bed and head down the Strand usually on bikes for morning practice that started at 4:45 a.m.

That meant it was usually lights out by 9 p.m.

It also meant travel — Smith remembers traveling to the East Coast and Hawaii while at CHS, and when he was a member of Croatia’s team, CHS played there. With the U.S. National Team, Smith and Beaubien traveled to “most parts of the world,” they said, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, Cuba, Slovakia, Russia and China.

Still, Beaubien shakes his head at the overall quality of water polo throughout the United States. “Everything about water polo is amateur in the U.S.,” he said. “Hopefully our success in Beijing can help springboard some investment in the future.”

Beaubien said the only viable option for U.S. players who wish to continue in the sport is to move to Europe where there are various levels of club competition from semi-pro to professional for the sport in many countries. The compensation ranges anywhere from simple room and board to healthy six-figure contracts that also include apartments, car, cell phone, meals at sponsoring restaurants and air travel.

This season (January–May) Smith, now 25, is playing for P.V.K. Jadran from Herceg Novi in Montenegro and will fly over earlier to help the team during the Euro League Games and the Montenegrian Cup. Earlier he played with team Mladost in Croatia for two years; the second year the team won the National Championship and made it to the Final Four of the European Championship. Before Mladost, he played on Team Ethnikos in Athens, Greece, his first season abroad, and the team won the National Championship.

Traveling with Smith is his wife, Brittany, whom he met at CHS when both were 16 and who also attended Pepperdine. The couple was married in summer 2007 on Catalina Island. “She’s played pretty much every sport besides water polo, although she is definitely a huge fan,” Smith says.

Beaubien, 32, is returning to play a fourth year in Greece and has played with clubs in Hungary, France and Brazil. He is the only water polo player in the history of the sport to be crowned national champion on three continents – North America, South America and Europe.

Beijing was a phenomenal experience, the teammates said.

Beaubien, who has asthma and is therefore a little more sensitive to air quality, said Beijing’s was terrible, even with the rain clearing things up a bit early in the competition. Smith added, “Sometimes you would look up at the sun and it would seem hazy and surrounded by a thick fog.”

But both praised the facilities. First stop was Beijing Normal University, which the U.S. had rented just for American athletes, allowing for a huge sense of patriotism and a strong bond among the Team USA athletes. The Olympic Village cafeteria offered everything an athlete seeking carbs and calories could want — pizza, pasta, a salad bar, Mediterranean food, Asian food, even a McCafe (McDonald’s was an Olympic sponsor.).

“I talked with one coach who had participated in ten Olympic games and he said that hands-down this was the best — best village, venues, organization and food,” Beaubien said.

And remember those opening ceremonies, where all the delegations were presented to the world? Smith and Beaubien stood in line for more than five hours waiting for Team USA to be announced into the stadium. “It was exciting,” Smith said. “We met President Bush and Kobe Bryant. And the best part was when the Chinese athlete flew through the sky and lit the torch; it made the wait worth it and it felt like the games had officially begun.”

“Explaining the rush of entering the opening ceremonies as part of Team USA is ineffable,” Beaubien added. “It’s one of those feelings close to impossible to categorize with words.”

Smith is in Coronado for the next few weeks and Beaubien looks forward to returning to visit family and friends. And when in town, neither athlete hesitates to jump into the water at the Brian Bent Memorial Aquatics Center, both for conditioning and to mix it up with future Olympians.

What does the future hold? While both entrepreneurial, and Smith stating, “Details pending,” you can be sure that water polo is part of the mix. And just maybe, if the stars are aligned, these two medalists will join other CHS grads in 2012 for the 30th Olympiad in London.