Havertown, Pennsylvania Produces Winners (And Me!)

FanHouse blogger Enrico Campitelli Jr. is on the scene in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics.

I'm in Beijing, China. Not sure exactly how far it is from Havertown, Pennsylvania -- the town I grew up in -- but it's safe to say it's a few thousand miles away from the comfort of a WaWa Shortie Italian. Knowing that fact, I wonder what the chances were that I'd run into not one, but two people from Havertown while in Beijing on the same night.

And both of them just happened to be sporting Olympic Medals they won earlier that day.
I was invited to be a guest at Anheuser Busch's Club Bud in Beijing on Sunday night to enjoy a night of icey American Lager's (free! and delicious!) and gold medal gawking.

The first notable to strut down the red carpet was Carl Lewis who I once stood behind in a security line in Paris' Charles De Gaulle Airport. Random.

After Lewis, the random athletes from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.S. started to arrive with their hardware hanging from their necks. There was nothing particularly interesting about any of these athletes besides the fact that they're the best in the world at their sporting discipline of choice.

Then Havertown's own Brendan Hansen strutted in with fellow U.S. swimmer Cullen Jones. Before coming to the games I knew of Hansen, a Haverford High School product, and had hoped to bump into him while in Beijing. Brendan was part of the relay team that helped Micheal Phelps win his eighth gold medal in Beijing. After introducing myself and telling him of my Havertownian roots, we chatted briefly, but I let him enjoy his celebration.

It's not until I used the bathroom that things got funny.


Random Dude peeing next to me to short, tiny white dude sporting U.S.A. gear: "So what sport do you play."

Short White Dude: "Rowing."

Me, while peeing, thinking I'm funny: "You must be a coxswain."

Short White Dude: "How do you even know what a coxswain is?" (Little known fact about me: I was a rower for one year in high school. It sucked.)

Me: "So where are you from"

Him: "Philadelphia."

Me: "No way, me too. Where'd you go to high school?"

Him: "Bonner."

Me: "No way. So do you know Eggy, Tugger, Spross, Brady, etc?"

Him: "Are you [expletive] with me?"

Then he whips out a medal from underneath his Team U.S.A. Polo shirt and says something to the effect of "Dude, I'm from Havertown and I've won a medal at the Olympics in Beijing!" Pretty awesome.

As it turns out, his name is Marcus McElhenney (pictured above) and he was the coxswain on the boat that won bronze on Sunday. He is also friends with tons of kids I know from growing up.

You can take the boy out of Delco but you can never take the Delco out of the boy. Even in China.

I was once again hanging out with the Washington Post's Dan Steinberg, who was actually working, and he's got some video of the amazing belt Cullen Jones was sporting last night.