Senior Juliana Paz broke through barriers to star for the Michigan volleyball team

Posted: Dec 3, 2009 at 7:06 AM [Dec 3, 2009]

The timing was perfect. Juliana Paz was home in Porto Alegre, Brazil, trying to make up her mind. Either play volleyball or go to college.

In Brazil, colleges and universities don’t have the same athletic options that exist in the United States. At the time, Paz never thought about trying to play in America. So she had to pick. Volleyball or college.

Happenstance intervened. A player showed up at her club team putting together an audition tape for Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Paz happened to be in the video practicing.

After watching the tape, the college coach, Terry Gamble, didn’t want the player trying out. He told a Brazilian he already had on his team, Luciana Rapach, he had to have Paz.

“I never thought about coming here, playing, getting an education, learning English,” Paz said. “Never thought that was ever going to happen.”

The offer came. It’s how Juliana Paz, now a Michigan senior leading the 13th-seeded Wolverines into the NCAA tournament, found her way to America, ended up at Michigan and made a decision that changed the trajectory of her life.

One wrinkle quickly appeared in the Paz-to-America plan. Paz spoke about three phrases of English when she landed in Omaha, Neb., to make the 20-minute drive to Council Bluffs, Iowa, four years ago.

The only English she knew was ‘Hi.’ ‘How are you?’ and ‘My name is.’ Certainly not enough to get by for a visit to America, let along a Brazilian making a go of it as a student in the United States. Yet there she was, in the middle of farmland a few months after being offered a chance to play. At first, she didn't understand the radical change.

“When I was in Brazil, it was like, ‘OK, I’m going to go to the United States and play and study,’” Paz said. “I don’t think I realized it until after a while.”

Her mind was spinning. Her first day in Iowa, accompanied by her parents, she took an English placement test, a math placement test and practiced.

She also met her host family and was immediately thrust into American life unable to communicate.

Soon after she arrived, Gamble called his friend, Mark Rosen, the coach at Michigan. He said he had a player who might have the talent to play in the Big Ten.

Immediately, Rosen asked if Paz spoke English. Gamble said no. Rosen said “no chance.”

Meanwhile, Paz began picking up the language. She was enrolled in English as a second language class and absorbed everything. Unaware of Paz’s intelligence, counselors at Iowa Western put her in a remedial math class, too.

That lasted one day.

“It was like learn how to add,” Paz said. “I don’t speak English, but I know math. So I went and talked to the counselor and was like, ‘Hey, you’re like insulting my intelligence here, I can do better than this.’”

Soon enough, she did. Her first semester at Iowa Western, Paz was named Junior College Player of the Year for volleyball. Her team won the national championship. And her English improved.

Instead of hiding behind the language barrier, she embraced it. She rarely cared if she sounded foolish or didn’t know what something meant. She’d ask. She’d learn. Paz quickly got over her Iowa Western teammates laughing when she pronounced pillow, ‘Pee-low,’ and when Michigan teammates explained how to pronounce the ‘th’ sound in words - one non-existent in her native Portuguese.

“I put it together really well," Paz said. "I’m really good at picking up things, so if you tell me once, ‘Hey, Jul, this is how you say it or you’re saying it funny, don’t say it like that,’ I change it right away, and every time I say it, I think about it and try to change it.”

Paz’s grades came in at the end of her first semester at Iowa Western. Straight A’s. The next semester, out of ESL classes and mixed in with the rest of the population, same thing. All A’s.

Gamble reached out to Rosen again. He said Paz’s English improved. Her grades were good.

So Rosen did something almost unheard of with any Michigan sport - he started heavily recruiting a junior college player. The Wolverines were losing their all-time kills leader, Katie Bruzdzinski, after the 2007 season.

“We just needed that kind of kid,” said Rosen, who called Paz an anomaly because of her juco status. “… She turned out to be exactly what we were looking for.”

Paz chose Michigan over Oregon State after her sophomore year and started 34 of 35 matches last year. This year, she finished the regular season as an All-Big Ten player after leading Michigan with 3.73 kills a game.

It took her a little while to adjust to Michigan. She knew no one and was timid going into her first preseason. Brazilian volleyball players typically display passion on the court, more flair, taunting and celebration than their American counterparts. Yet Paz was quiet her first week, almost too quiet.

Rosen talked with her. Told her it was OK for her to be different than the rest of the players around her, born and bred in the United States.

Later that week, the 6-foot Paz elevated and stuffed a teammate.

“She kind of went, ‘Yeeahhh,’” Rosen said. “I think it was Megan Bower, and she was like, ‘What is that?’

“I was like ‘That’s it. Finally. You can see it.”

As she fit in on the volleyball court, she blended into American culture. By the end of her first year in Iowa, she had picked up English well enough that when she went on her official visit to Michigan, Rosen was surprised at how well Paz understood the idiosyncrasies of the language.

A lot has changed for Paz since she was an 18-year-old leaving everything she knew to go live on another continent. She adapted to eating fast food after having her mother cook dinner for her every night. And she picked up an entirely new language, perhaps better than she ever thought she would.

She even started dreaming in English instead of Portuguese, a sign she’s mastered the language.

“It feels like more than four years ago, because I think I’ve been speaking English for like 10 because I speak English every day now,” Paz said. “Sometimes, I talk to my parents and I forget a word in Portuguese.”

She’s adapted so much that she’s even fielding the same questions all of her other senior classmates have been getting - what is next?

Paz isn’t sure. She will be in Ann Arbor next year to finish her degree. She might try to play professionally in Puerto Rico after she finishes. And she needs to rest her body from the thousands of swings her right arm has taken throughout her career.

A large ice pack on her right shoulder looks like it belongs on an offensive lineman confirms the toll of those swings - and of a journey fulfilled and almost completed. Each step of the way, she saw things that told her the same thing - making this move was the right decision.

“I really believe there was a reason to come here,” Paz said. “I’m in Brazil studying and there’s this invitation of, ‘Hey do you want to go.’ And I come here and we win nationals. It was like, whoa, there’s something for me there. I want to stay.

“I don’t know, if volleyball didn’t go well I probably would have just stayed, you know. I don’t like to quit. I like to finish and I had the opportunity to come here and it was like OK, I’m going to finish that.”

That was something she never had to worry about.

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein.