|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame welcomed its newest group of inductees earlier this month, nine female leaders and role models who have made an imprint on their communities.
Among the honorees enshrined during the luncheon ceremony on May 4 at The Club at Castlewood in Pleasanton was U.S. Women’s Sitting Volleyball National Team member and two-time gold medalist Bethany Zummo – the Tri-Valley’s lone representative in the Class of 2024.
A Dublin High School alumna, Zummo currently coaches at NorCal Volleyball Club based in Livermore and is training for the 2024 Summer Paralympic Games in Paris in August and September. The 31-year-old was inducted in the Sports & Athletics category for the Hall of Fame.
“I love adaptive sport. I think it is so much more than just for the disabled community. Sitting volleyball specifically just levels the playing field … like everybody can sit down and try this sport,” Zummo said in a video posted on the Women’s Hall of Fame website.
She pointed out that many of the local players she coaches want to try sitting volleyball after seeing the game in action.
“That’s really what’s important to me is getting girls to see the diversity that is in our world,” she said in the video.
“So often we’re like ‘this’ and this is the only way to be, and there’s so much pressure on young girls to be a certain way. I was part of feeling that pressure, right?” added Zummo, who had her right foot amputated at 2 years old because of complications from two congenital conditions.
“Like I didn’t want to play sitting volleyball or an adaptive sport because I thought it was weird, I thought it was different, and all I wanted to do was fit in,” she said. “I just want to be able to show my girls that it is so much more fun to stand out and be different. They don’t have to put so much pressure on themselves to be perfect … I’ve been exactly where they are.”
In the video, Zummo also brings out her two gold medals that she won with Team USA in 2016 at Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro (the program’s first-ever gold) and in 2021 when they defended their title in Tokyo (in the Games delayed a year because of the pandemic). She earned Best Libero recognition for her performance in Japan.
“These are very special to me, but it’s more than just the hardware. It’s about the lifestyle commitment and discipline that not just myself but my team, my community has put in,” she said.
Zummo wrapped her two-minute-plus remarks with more perspective.
“That because of where I got to today I get to come back and coach these girls and hang out with them…” she said. “And some of them are just wonderful, wonderful people. Like I can’t wait for them to like grow up and be successful and just see what they do with their own potential, and I’m just excited to see that for them.”
The other members of the Hall of Fame, who hail from other parts of Alameda County, have made their marks on their communities in a variety of ways.
The list includes Dr. Noha Aboelata, CEO of Roots Community Health in Oakland (Health category); Bakesale Betty co-owner and chef Alison Barakat (Business & Professions); Elaine Brown, founder and CEO of Oakland and the World Enterprises (Justice); and Courtenay Carr Heuer, co-founder and executive director of Scientific Adventures for Girls in Berkeley (Science-Tech-Engineering).
Rounding out the Class of 2024 are Dianne Fukami, producer and director of Bridge Media Inc. (Culture & Art); Dee Johnson, founder and executive director of the Lend A Hand Foundation (Community Service); Oakland Unified School District Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell (Education); and Dominique Mellion, executive director of Families United for Equity (Emerging Leaders).
The Hall of Fame also honored four female students in the county this spring with $5,000 from the Mary V. King/Wilma Chan Youth Scholarship Fund.
The recipients were Daisy Fountaine of Oakland Technical High School, Sesina Haile of Encinal Junior/Senior High School in Alameda, Elizabeth Melendez Santos of Mount Eden High School in Hayward and Moragaut Souet-Samounn of San Leandro High School.
Learn more about this year’s Hall of Fame honorees at www.acgov.org/whof.
Editor’s note: Jeremy Walsh is the editorial director for the Embarcadero Media Foundation’s East Bay Division. His “What a Week” column is a recurring feature in the Pleasanton Weekly, Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com.
