BEIJING — Logan Tom will stand on a podium in China to accept an Olympic medal this Saturday, most likely unaware how much her success means to her hometown of Salt Lake City.

"I've got the Olympic sleep deprivation thing going on like everyone," said Westminster women's volleyball coach Kim Norman, who was Tom's high school and club coach at Highland High when Tom led the Rams to state titles in 1997 and 1998.

"I've got a tournament this weekend. We're playing the No. 2-ranked team in the country at 10 a.m., but I told my players, 'Make it quick. I've got to get out of here and get in front of a big-screen TV.' It's awesome. She does a lot for the sport of volleyball."

It took three trips to the Olympics, but Tom will finally earn an Olympic medal when the U.S. team faces Brazil in Saturday's championship match. And it's not just those who watched Tom play for the Rams who will be cheering her on Saturday.

"We've been back to school this week in staff meetings, and every day we have been doing the Logan Tom updates," said Highland High principal Paul Shulte, who was not at the school when Tom was a student.

Still, he said, the Rams are so proud of their alumna that if the game were on a weekday, Shulte said he'd set up a big screen and let the students make a party out of it.

Tom's journey to that podium was long and sometimes discouraging. The Stanford alumna became a national darling at age 19, helping the Americans to the volleyball semifinals in the 2000 Olympics before losses in their last two matches kept a medal just out of reach.

After a quarterfinal loss in the 2004 Athens Games, the outside hitter took a three-year break from the U.S. national team while playing beach volleyball.

Last fall, a phone call brought all three — Tom, coach "Jenny" Lang Ping and the U.S. team — together for this magical Olympic run in Beijing.

"I knew they were struggling a little on the outside with ball control and passing, and I knew I could at least donate that to the team and hopefully some offense, too, since I'm a small player out there," said Tom after Wednesday's semifinal sweep of Cuba put the U.S. in the finals.

"I called them up and said, 'I'm here if you need me. I don't want to step on any toes. I know I took three years off, and I don't know if there's any hard feelings with that,"' she recalled.

"But they said they'd love to have me back and welcomed me with open arms — so it was a mutual embracement."

And a mutual benefit, with the U.S. and Tom both guaranteed to win a medal — the Americans' first since claiming a bronze at the '92 Barcelona Games, and Tom's first, period.