TEMPE, Ariz. — There are 53 players on the Arizona Cardinals. Not one of them has a gold medal.
Out of the hundreds of players, coaches, staff, front office personnel, ticket personnel, administrative staff... there's only one gold medalist in the bunch.
Whitney Dosty is an account manager with not one, but two gold medals. She brought home her latest medal from Paris just a few weeks ago.
"I always wanted to win a gold medal," Dosty said, with the medal in her hand. "Every time I did one of those sports, I could have sworn that's what I was going to win a medal."
First, it was gymnastics, then swimming. Dosty said she was always an athletic kid. But when you're 6'3", gymnastics is a long shot. Then Dosty found volleyball and her career took off.
"And then volleyball came, and I for sure, was like, I'm going to go win a gold medal as a volleyball player," Dosty said. "I never anticipated it being sitting volleyball."
Dosty was a high school standout in Tucson and then a star player at the University of Arizona. There were injuries, of course, but she came back every time. After graduation, she played professional volleyball in Europe and Asia and was able to see the world.
However, she dislocated her ankle in Europe playing volleyball and it wouldn't get better. She tried seeing doctors from America and overseas with no luck. Finally, she was down to two options: A full ankle replacement, which didn't sound encouraging, or fusing her ankle together.
"Three surgeries later, my ankle's now fused. I'm pain-free. It's the best decision I could have made. I wish I had made it sooner," Dosty said.
However, the surgery means her ankle no longer flexes up and down. She could still do athletic things, but she couldn't run or play traditional indoor volleyball anymore.
“My mom was watching the Invictus Games on TV," Dosty said, referring to the annual games for disabled veterans. "That kind of opened my eyes to having a disability and being able to play a sport.”
"Immediately I went and started googling," she said. "I didn't know what to call it. I was like... wheelchair volleyball? Sit down volleyball?' Anything.”
Sitting volleyball ended up being correct. And because of her previous volleyball stardom, she had some connections with Team USA. That led her to a spot on the Women's sitting volleyball team and another shot at that gold medal.
Sitting volleyball is basically the same as traditional volleyball. The net is shorter, though, at her height, Dosty said she's typically seeing at, or over, the net. Players sit on the court, but can move from place to place. The only catch is that players have to be sitting fully on the court when they hit the ball.
Four years after finding out that the sport existed, Dosty was in Tokyo at the 2021 Paralympics, where she won her first gold medal.
Then, just a few weeks ago, she was in Paris competing in the 2024 Paralympics in the gold medal match against perennial rival China.
The match came down to the final set, the USA up by two. A spike over the net bounced off a Chinese player's hand and skipped out of bounds and Dosty had her second gold medal.
“Nothing beats that feeling," Whitney said. "Nothing beats being on a podium, having a gold medal around your neck, and then, like hearing the National Anthem."
But then, after the most incredible high in an athlete's career, the games ended and Dosty was faced with a situation that almost all of us face: She had to go back to work.
"Everybody here has been so supportive," she said. "People were watching, I was getting messages while I was in Paris."
And her coworkers are already asking about LA 2028. After all, it would only be a short drive to go see her play for a third medal.
“I'm going to be thinking about it," she said, "but I'll honestly ride this high for a little bit."
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