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The day of the bus crash is a blank space in Stacy Sykora's memory. So is the week before. So are the 11 days afterward, days the three-time U.S. Olympic volleyball player spent in an intensive care unit of a Brazilian hospital, first in a medically induced coma, then conscious but with an uncertain prognosis due to her closed head injury.

That kind of amnesia is usually described as a blessing, and Sykora agreed it's probably best she doesn't have any recollection of the moment last April 12 when the Volei Futuro team bus, en route to a playoff game, skidded in a downpour and tipped over onto its side, shattering the windows and tossing the club's staff and players around like marbles in a tin can.

No one else was seriously injured. One woman had a broken arm, others were bruised and scraped. Sykora's teammates found her face down in a puddle of water. A passing driver offered to take her to the hospital. Two players accompanied her. Her condition, first reported as not serious, quickly deteriorated. Several of her friends from the U.S. national team made their way to Brazil, and the women's volleyball community held its breath.

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Volei Futuro Volleyball ClubStacy Sykora returned to competition in January with her Volei Futuro club in Brazil.

Nine months and a thousand hours of rehab later, the 34-year-old Sykora is playing again and bears no outward sign of trauma, except that she wears more bobby pins in her hair (one side of her head was shaved and her hair is still growing out).

Her career prognosis is still uncertain, but in a telephone interview from Brazil last week, Sykora said she's "in a better mental place than I was before the accident." Her first competitive minutes since the crash came in January. She felt like she had "won the lottery ... I thought I would be nervous, but I was just so happy," she said.

Sykora will play in her accustomed libero (defensive specialist) position with Volei Futuro until April, fly to California via her home state of Texas, and rejoin the national team.

"I'll be there until I make the [Olympic] team or I don't make the team,'' she said, and sighed deeply. "First and foremost, it's about the team. Do I want to go? Yes. But I have to see how I work with this team. There are some great liberos who are fighting for the same position. ... I don't want [the accident] to be for me or against me. Regardless of what happens with me, it's going to be a great USA team."

That serenity didn't descend overnight for the Burleson, Texas, native, a two-time All-American at Texas A&M and 2008 Olympic silver medalist.

Sykora learned just how mysterious brain function can be when she emerged from a three-day coma and, she was later told, spoke Portuguese to the doctor, Italian to her agent and English to her mother at her bedside. She doesn't remember that, or learning to walk again. Her first memory is of circling a date -- April 23 -- on a calendar.

She was released from the hospital in early May, flew back to the United States and spent the summer and part of the fall shuttling between Casa Colina in Pomona, Calif., which specializes in helping patients recover from brain injuries, and the U.S. team's training base in Anaheim.

"They proved to me how important they've always been," Sykora said of her fellow players. "They helped me go from a one to a nine."

But she found it hard to fend off frustration at times. "I was big-time in the past," Sykora said. "I'd think, 'I could have dug that ball before the accident,' or 'I could have run that ball down.'"

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AP Photo/Morry GashStacy Sykora plans to rejoin the U.S. national team in April.

Sykora was able to get fit relatively quickly, but her vision -- one of the things that made her a great libero -- had to be retrained like a muscle that had atrophied. A volleyball sailing through the air would sometimes disappear on her, like the moon ducking behind a cloud. Sykora had to put in long, tedious hours to regain clarity, light contrast and depth perception (and is still doing exercises five times a week). She needed ball touches, and she needed to re-map spatial relationships with her teammates on the court.

When the U.S. team traveled to the World Cup in Tokyo last October and secured an Olympic berth, Sykora wasn't yet ready to play a competitive match. She went back to Brazil and started traveling with the club again; she began dressing for games in December. And Sykora asked her Volei Futuro teammates to fill in the gaps about what had happened last April.

They told her she had been sitting on a teammate's lap, listening to music, when the bus flipped sideways. Everyone else grabbed their seats, but she went into free fall. They told her she was unconscious with her face in the water for perhaps 30 seconds, perhaps a minute; no one could be sure in the chaos of the moment. They told her how she was lifted out through a window and carried away. At one game, a man came up and introduced himself. "I'm the one who took you to the hospital," he said.

One day, boarding the team bus to go to an away match, Sykora insisted on recreating the scene and defiantly plopped down on the same teammate's legs. "I told them, 'I'm looked after now, this is not going to happen again,'" she said.

Everywhere Sykora goes, people tell her she's a walking miracle; but the true transformation has been internal, the kind of emotional depth perception that has nothing to do with 20/20 vision.

"I hope I get to 100 percent, but I'm content with where I'm at," she said. "I'm only focused on today. I don't look to the future at all. The only thing that matters, the only thing I have every day, is 24 hours to do everything I can."

Danielle Scott-Arruda, 39, is bidding to become one of a select few women to compete in volleyball in five consecutive Olympic Games. (Brazil's Hélia Rogério de Souza and Russia's Yevgeniya Artamonova-Estes are the others.) In 2008, the middle blocker helped lead the Americans to a silver medal, the team's first podium appearance since 1992.

Scott-Arruda took time off last year after the birth of her daughter, Julianne, in April. She began training again a scant four weeks later and said she never considered leaving the game. Scott-Arruda rejoined the program in the fall of 2010 and made the roster for last month's World Cup, where the team (she said the squad is perhaps the deepest she's played for) qualified for London by finishing second to host Japan.

"Having red, white and blue on my back is what motivates me," she told reporters on a conference call Monday.

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Steve Dykes/Getty ImagesDanielle Scott-Arruda's first Olympics appearance was in 1996 at the Atlanta Games.

Here are more excerpts:

• On playing for coach Hugh McCutcheon, who guided the U.S. men's team to Olympic gold in 2008 just days after his father-in-law was killed and mother-in-law seriously injured in a random attack early in the Beijing Games:

"It was quite a thrill to hear that he was now going to coach the women's team after he did such a good job with the men's team in getting a gold. I'm like, 'I hope we can get some of that.' ... I think he just makes sure the team is thinking about 'team' and how we can make the team better. It seems simple, but it's just a philosophy that everyone has to buy into, that you get out of 'self' and think more about 'team,' and beyond that, he adds a lot of feedback and a concept of how he likes things done, different ways he can make each player a little bit better.

"Even going for my fifth Olympics, I'm still working on little things that I can get better [at] that make the team better. He has a staff that's really well known in the sport. ... I just have to really say hats off to him [for his coaching job under difficult circumstances in 2008]. He was quite the husband and person of comfort for not only his team but for his wife during that period. With difficulty, you have to try to find some good and strength out of it, and I think he's done a good job doing that and just preparing the team for the next phase."

• On whether she expects the medal contenders to be the "usual suspects" of Brazil, Cuba, Russia and China, and how her seven years' experience playing for clubs in Brazil, where U.S. teammates Destinee Hooker and Stacy Sykora also play, may provide insight on how to beat the defending gold medalists:

"At any point, anyone can be a contender. ... Sometimes it comes down to who can make the least errors and be most efficient in the game. Germany has had a good season this year, and teams that have done well in the past that we didn't see at the World Cup are Azerbaijan, even Turkey and Serbia. The top-ranked teams can just change by a matter of points, so we just have to focus on playing our best game and be prepared for the other teams, making sure our game is crisp.

"[Playing club ball in Brazil], you do get to learn more of their tendencies. ... I'm working on making myself better so I can make good reads and get in good spots for attack, and serving tough, and just being an all-around player -- and that's going to make you successful against all the other teams. ... I haven't signed a contract yet, but looks like I will return there for this season."

• On being a new mother:

"Being a mom is so wonderful. After a hard day's training, coming home and seeing her smile, running with her long arms toward me and jumping up saying 'Hold me' ... having her and wanting her to know, even though she's so young, that I was able to come back to volleyball and play at a high level and hopefully have her see me play at a high level has been a motivation for me.

"The fact that my mom is retired and can take care of her and they're able to travel with me allows me to train and not worry about who's caring for her or whatnot. It's been a great journey, and I hope to be a good example for her and for others -- that even being older and having a child, dreams and aspirations are still attainable when you work hard and believe in yourself and other people believe in you, as well."

• On her longevity in the sport:

"I had no idea that I would continue playing this long, or even starting out that I would get a scholarship to play volleyball [at Long Beach State University] and then have the opportunity to make the national team and go to an Olympics, or have such an incredible career.

"Coming out of college, I played multiple sports. I got a fifth year in basketball but chose to go to the [volleyball] national team. It was, 'Come to the national team or don't come at all.' So, of course I went to the national team. It was a great decision, and I thank [former U.S. women's coach] Terry Liskevych for giving me the opportunity. ... I still have that spirit and passion of a rookie, but I've gained a lot of experience along the way, which I think just adds to my game.

"I'm just so excited to step on the court; when I got my jerseys this summer and had my first opportunity in the World Cup to put it on, I was taking pictures. ... I wish it wouldn't end, but eventually, of course, I will have to hang up my shoes, put them up in the closet on the shelf. Until then, I'm going to enjoy the process. I've been really blessed to physically be able to do it, and mentally I just enjoy the game."

A look at how some American athletes fared Monday at the Pan American Games:

Gymnastics

The U.S. women's team won the team gold medal Monday, its 14th title in Pan Am Games history.

Team USA finished with 219.750 points, followed by Canada (217.450) and Brazil (209.825). The gold-winning squad included Bridgette Caquatto, Jessie DeZiel, Brandie Jay, Shawn Johnson, Grace McLaughlin and Bridget Sloan.

"I was going through the lineup and getting all teary-eyed because I was so proud of them," Johnson said. "We have gone through a lot in the last couple of weeks and I think we did a great job."

The U.S. also qualified for the all-around (held Wednesday) individual events (Thursday and Friday):

All-around: Caquatto and Jay.

Vault: Jay.

Uneven bars: Caquatto and Johnson.

Balance beam: DeZiel (third reserve athlete).

Floor exercise: DeZiel.

Boxing

The final four U.S. boxers were eliminated from contention in Monday's quarterfinal bouts: flyweight John Franklin, lightweight Toka Kahn Clary, light heavyweight Jeffery Spencer and super heavyweight Danny Kelly.

Men's volleyball

Team USA rallied from a 12-9 deficit in the fifth set to defeat Puerto Rico, 22-25, 25-19, 20-25, 25-16, 15-13 in its opening pool-play match. Captain Evan Patak led all scorers with 27 points on 18 kills, seven blocks and two aces.

"We won because of two things. First, our ability to adapt," U.S. coach John Speraw said. "We made some crucial adjustments throughout the match from a variety of different players. And for a young team like this, I found that impressive. Second, the serving of our captain, Evan Patak, carried the team when we struggled early in the match. He put on some runs that helped us win the second set and give us the confidence to beat Puerto Rico."

Next up for the men's squad: Canada on Tuesday in Pool B play.

Track and field

The U.S. earned three medals on the opening day of the track and field competition at the Pan Ams.

Jarred Rome won silver medal in the men's discus, Amber Campbell won bronze to become the first U.S. athlete to earn a Pan Ams medal in the women's hammer throw since 1999, and Becky Holliday took home the bronze in women's pole vault.

"The most challenging part was having this late of outdoor season because I compete indoors, as well ... so I've been going since January," Campbell said. I'm really hoping to continue the success into next year, try to fight these girls all around the world and make it to the podium in London."