SLIPPERY ROCK - Melinda Rhoads, the Olympic torch held firmly in her left hand, felt something was missing.

As she ran down Route 20 near Erie on June 11, 1996, something didn't feel quite right. There was a void she needed to fill to make carrying the torch on its way to Atlanta all the more special.

It didn't take long for her to find what was amiss. She spotted her 7-year-old daughter, Jence, along the route and instincts took over.

She waved for Jence to join her. The security along the route, which was staunch and protective, let her daughter pass and Jence joined mom for the run of a lifetime.

"I asked her if she was OK while we were running," Rhoads said. "She said she was fine. She ran right there next to me."

The torch eventually ended up in the hands of Muhammad Ali in Atlanta. Rhoads helped get it there.

It was a special moment etched in time for Rhoads amid a sea of them for her, husband longtime basketball Robert "Posey" Rhoads and daughters Jence, Karly and Kourtney.

Long before Melinda Rhoads carried the torch in 1996, the Olympics were in her thoughts.

After a stellar basketball career at Slippery Rock State College (now Slippery Rock University), Rhoads tried out for the U.S. Olympic women's basketball team.

She was one of the final cuts.

"There were 15 of us left and they took 12," Rhoads said. "I wasn't one of the 12."

Not all was lost for Rhoads. There was always handball.

In a strange twist, Rhoads found out Slippery Rock was holding tryouts for the Olympic women's handball team. She attended and made the team even though she knew next to nothing about the sport.

She wasn't alone. Many of her teammates her on the national squad had little knowledge of the game.

"There were 50 women and none of us knew what we were doing," Rhoads said. "We had a German coach and we practiced eight hours a day for eight days in a row. We found out it was hard to teach old athletes new tricks."

The team went overseas tin preparation for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. That's when Rhoads started to understand the nuances of the sport.

"The skills you use are a lot like basketball, but you can be more physical," she said. "I found it harder to go back to playing basketball."

The team finished fourth in Los Angeles, just missing an Olympic medal.

But Rhoads had a love for the sport and began coaching it.

She will always remember the feeling of being an Olympian.

"Rarely does a day go by that I don't relate the Olympics to a moment in my life," Rhoads said. "There's a commercial now that says the Olympics aren't every four years; they are every day. Having been there, I can definitely relate to that."

No one calls Robert Rhoads "Robert." It's always been Posey since his days playing youth baseball in Mercer.

And he's always been known as a winner, especially when he was a 6-foot-4 forward for the Mercer High basketball team.

The Mustangs galloped to two state titles with Rhoads in 1966 and 1967, and went to three state championship games in four years.

"It was amazing," he said. "Incredible.

"On the nights we played, if you were a thief, you would do very well for yourself (in Mercer)," Rhoads added. "There was no one there."

Rhoads was a scorer in high school, but when he went to Wake Forest - turning down Westminster College - he switched from shooting forward to point guard.

It was a difficult transition, but he found a way to pull it off.

"Everyone there is as good as you are," Posey Rhoads said of college basketball. "And they are always trying to replace you."

He picked Wake Forest over then-NAIA Westminster because he wanted to see if he could compete at a higher level, and few places were as high as Wake Forest and the Atlantic Coast Conference."They were similar academically," he said. "But I wanted to see if I could play in the big stage.Rhoads averaged 10.5 points per game as a senior at Wake Forest, finally healthy after breaking his foot as a sophomore.After Wake Forest, Rhoads played professionally in Australia and New Zealand.But his life changed soon after when Melinda returned from Atlanta and her Olympic experience."We just sort of found each other," Melinda Rhoads says of meeting Posey. "We were lucky."Posey and Melinda had been acquaintances since high school. Melinda Rhoads was a star at Oil City High and her future husband one of the biggest stars at Mercer.When she returned from the '84 Olympics, she struck up a deeper relationship with him.At the time, Posey Rhoads had just wrapped up his second season as head basketball coach at Thiel College and was named the Presidents' Athletic Conference coach of the year.But there was an opportunity on the horizon. Bob Bartlett was named the head basketball coach at Slippery Rock University and was looking for an assistant. Rhoads was his man.Soon, he was Melinda's man, too. They were married in 1987.Posey enjoyed success at SRU, designing the offense that showcased the skills of Myron Brown and yielding 100-point games more often than not in the early 1990s.He was the assistant coach at Slippery Rock University from the 1984-85 season until the 1993-94 season, when Bartlett was forced out amid concerns he violated NCAA regulations.Rhoads took over the program for a year as interim coach before he was let go."They sort of threw the baby out with the bath water," he said. "They just wanted to start over."Posey Rhoads went on to coach the Slippery Rock High team for several seasons and is now the assistant girls basketball coach.Melinda Rhoads is also heavily involved in coaching. The couple oversees a 15-and-under girls AAU basketball team that will be playing for a national championship in July and also run and assist in a myriad of summer basketball camps.Finding players to coach is no problem, even at home. The Rhoads family is also its own basketball team.Posey and Melinda Rhoads see a lot of themselves in Jence, Karly and Kourtney.Jence, 15 and an incoming sophomore at Slippery Rock High School, is more like her mother - a playmaker who can score when she wants, but prefers to get everyone involved.Karly and Kourtney, both 12, are like their, never passing up a shooting opportunity."There aren't enough basketballs on the court for them," Melinda said. "They like to shoot it. They probably shoot it a little better than Jence. They love to score."The couple have tried not to push their daughters too hard because basketball is a fun family activity - with the emphasis on fun."We don't make them shoot five bazillion shots," Melinda Rhoads said. "I don't think we put pressure on them and they don't put pressure on themselves.""I'm still the best shooter in the house," Posey Rhoads said.While that is still up for debate in the Rhoads household, what isn't a point of contention is how much sports has affected their lives for the better."I have a wonderful husband, three healthy, beautiful girls and the keys to three gyms," Melinda Rhoads said. "What else can I want?"