Post by GoBigRed on Apr 13, 2006 8:33:07 GMT -5
NU volleyball player Sarah Pavan is a two-world star — in her sport and in the classroom. To find out what a typical school day is like for an Academic All-American, we sent Cindy Lange-Kubick back to school April 6 to spend a day with Pavan. Typical day? Yes. Typical student? No.
BY CINDY LANGE-KUBICK | Lincoln Journal Star
Wake up and work out
Oh, great.
The football team is lifting.
Sarah Pavan drops her backpack outside the West Stadium weight room and walks in, a 19-year-old Amazon with more leg than Rebecca Romijn, a 22-inch vertical jump and a killer southpaw spike.
It’s a recent Thursday morning. Queen is blaring. Oh mama mia, mama mia…
It’s not that the 6-foot-5 sophomore volleyball superstar dislikes football players. It’s just that, well, she’s not crazy about working out with them.
Sarah wanders past rows of dumbbells and bench presses. Her teammate Tracy Stalls, a 6-foot-3 middle blocker, wild hair pulled back in a knot, just messed up a lift.
“Hey, Pav.”
“I totally saw you do that,” Sarah says.
Let’s get this one thing out of the way right now: Yes, she’s the tallest young woman on a team of tall young women.
And no, she does not play basketball.
“People ask me that all the time. It drives me nuts.”
Sarah stretches. She goes through her shoulder routine and her hang cleans and her squat jumps.
Then she walks past half the offensive line to the incline bench. She grabs a pair of wafer-thin weights.
“This is where I get embarrassed,” she says.
She points to Greg Austin. The lineman with cantaloupe biceps is hefting a pair of dumbbells, too: 135 pounds each.
“One of those things is like as much as me,” she says.
She weighed 150 when she came here from Kitchener, Ontario, in 2004.
“I was like a stick person.”
Today, she steps on the scale. 170.4.
Analytical Geometry and Calc II starts in an hour. She has a quiz.
“I better get 10 out of 10.”
Sarah freaks about her grades, even when there’s no reason to freak.
“My friends think I’m psycho. They call me like a nerd because I’m always studying.”
She walks out of the weight room.
The hallway is lined with oil paintings of first team Academic All-Americans.
She takes a left — a few steps away from a portrait of a smiling, volleyball-playing, 4.0 biochemistry major from Canada.
Recoup and relax
She finds a seat in the Hewitt Academic Center computer lab and starts her routine.
She goes over a message about an upcoming exhibition match against Purdue. (They will win 4-1. Sarah will have 19 kills.)
She logs onto Facebook.com, the online yearbook for college students.
“I’m addicted.”
She pulls up an extra credit assignment from Organic Chemistry. She stares at the spectroscopy graph.
“I guess we’re supposed to know what this is by looking at the lines. OK, sweet.”
If she has an A in the class, she can skip the final. She’ll figure out the graph.
Sarah packs up her books and takes a shortcut through South Stadium.
It always smells like sweaty socks, she says.“We were throwing up last week walking through here.”
This is the football shrine. But volleyball players get plenty of glory at Nebraska, too.
Her teammate Dani Busboom grew up here, where girls dress as Husker volleyball players for Halloween.
“Where I’m from, people dress up like Wayne Gretzky.”
If all goes according to plan, one day little girls will dress up as No. 9.
Ever since she can remember, Sarah has been driven to be the best.
In school. In volleyball.
She won’t accept average. Second place? Top 10? Runner-up? Honorable mention?
Forget it.
“When I was 5 years old I had my life planned out.”
Her dad was her coach. Both of her parents played volleyball at the highest levels. But the drive, she says, comes from her.
Why?
“Coach Cook asks me that all the time and I don’t know,” she says. “It’s just me.”
Now she wants to help her team win a national championship. If they don’t, she will feel she has failed.
Two-time volleyball All-American?
Not good enough.
“I want to be the best player that’s ever left this program. I’ve worked my whole life for this.”
Last time she got a B?
Never.
K+1 to the 10th divided by 2(k+1)
Sarah sits in the back row of Room 204 in Oldfather Hall. She sharpens her pencil. She messes with her cuticles. She lines up a meeting for a group project with a couple of other back-row students.
She does not doodle.
She’s one of only three women in the class. Math 107 is full of engineering majors, she says.
The instructor starts the review. The problems take up half the blackboard.
Nearly everyone else is finished when Sarah takes her quiz to the front of the room.
She dials Canada on her way down the stairs.
“Daddy. Hey. Hello. I just took my math quiz. I think I might have lost the perfect now.”
She calls her dad every day after math.
They talk about summer school and summer volleyball tournaments and this afternoon’s practice.
It’s time to say goodbye.
“So do I worry about my math quiz? Cuz I’m seriously panicking.”
Training table time
Sarah is back at the Hewitt Center. She walks the same path every day in her size 11 Adidas.
The volleyball Bermuda Triangle: Hewitt Center. Class. Coliseum. Hewitt Center. Class. Coliseum.
She takes a tray at the training table. She makes a giant fajita and fills two bowls with fruit.
Teammate Rachel Holloway sits across the table.
Tracy Stalls sits down, too. Sarah eyes her food.
“Is that jambalaya?”
“Have you ever tried it?”
Sarah makes a face.
“The gag face,” Tracy says. A Pavan trademark.
One of the players says she’s been having heartburn.
“Aren’t we like too young to be having heartburn?” Dani Busboom asks.
“It’s not from your heart,” Sarah explains. “It’s from the stomach acid coming up.”
Tracy points her fork.
“Oh, you biology major.”
Nucleotide excision repair and all that jazz
Another quiz. This one in Cell Structure and Function.
And tomorrow, a test.
Sarah is taking 12 credit hours this semester. She wants to graduate in four years, so she takes summer school, too.
Maybe she’ll be a pediatrician someday. She plans to play pro volleyball as long as she can. Maybe coach after that.
Volleyball is totally her life. She can’t remember not playing, ever.
So it’s class. Study. Workouts in the weight room. Study. Three-hour practices six days a week. Study.
Sari Raber, a soccer player, is in this class. The instructor is handing back old quizzes.
I bet I did worse than you, Sarah says.
They shake.
Sari gets her quizzes back: 18/20 and 20/20.
Sarah gets hers: 20/20 and 20/20.
Sari wins the bet. Sari always wins the bet. Sarah always wins the points.
Take 10
Practice starts at 3:30, so Sarah can nap for 45 minutes in the locker room.
When she gets to the Coliseum, half the volleyball team is on the sidewalk, working on their tans.
Hey, Pav! C’mon!
“The sun is going to sap up your energy and you’ll be dead for practice.”
She joins them anyway.
They start yelling at guys passing by.
Hey! Do you want to lay with us?
“I have class,” a guy in a ballcap yells back.
Sarah watches him go.
“He so wanted to.”
Practice makes national championship contenders
How do you get swagger, Sarah? Coach John Cook asks.
Sarah and her teammates stand in a circle in the Coliseum, ankles taped, knees braced, ready for practice.
She screws up her face. “You get swagger when you come right back the next time.”
Sarah lists goals for today’s practice. Have swagger. Be aggressive. Communicate. Work as a team.
OK, Pavie. Let’s get ’em going.
The team stretches. Sarah and Tracy pair up for a game of pepper. Pass. Set. Hit. Pass. Set. Hit.
More drills. Water break. Scrimmage. Water. Scrimmage. Run.
Cool down.
Coach gathers the team.
Sarah, how’d we do?
She gives swagger a 10. Communication a 10. Aggressive a 9.
“We were real good today,” Cook says.
Sarah stops in the training room before her shower.
Tomorrow is going to be a great day. It’s the weekend. Her test will be over.
She’s heading home now. She’ll eat dinner. Call her dad. And then hit the books for her biology test.
She pauses for a minute before taking off her gear.
“I’m kind of panicking.”
Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.
About Academic All-Americans* Started in 1962.
* Nebraska leads the nation with 226.
* The first team is made up of 88 collegiate athletes annually. Football receives the most first-team spots, with 24; volleyball gets six.
* This past season two of the six were Huskers: Sarah Pavan and Christina Houghtelling.
* Two Nebraska football players also were named to the first team: Dane Todd and Kurt Mann.
* Individuals whose teams have not finished spring seasons have not yet been named.
BY CINDY LANGE-KUBICK | Lincoln Journal Star
Wake up and work out
Oh, great.
The football team is lifting.
Sarah Pavan drops her backpack outside the West Stadium weight room and walks in, a 19-year-old Amazon with more leg than Rebecca Romijn, a 22-inch vertical jump and a killer southpaw spike.
It’s a recent Thursday morning. Queen is blaring. Oh mama mia, mama mia…
It’s not that the 6-foot-5 sophomore volleyball superstar dislikes football players. It’s just that, well, she’s not crazy about working out with them.
Sarah wanders past rows of dumbbells and bench presses. Her teammate Tracy Stalls, a 6-foot-3 middle blocker, wild hair pulled back in a knot, just messed up a lift.
“Hey, Pav.”
“I totally saw you do that,” Sarah says.
Let’s get this one thing out of the way right now: Yes, she’s the tallest young woman on a team of tall young women.
And no, she does not play basketball.
“People ask me that all the time. It drives me nuts.”
Sarah stretches. She goes through her shoulder routine and her hang cleans and her squat jumps.
Then she walks past half the offensive line to the incline bench. She grabs a pair of wafer-thin weights.
“This is where I get embarrassed,” she says.
She points to Greg Austin. The lineman with cantaloupe biceps is hefting a pair of dumbbells, too: 135 pounds each.
“One of those things is like as much as me,” she says.
She weighed 150 when she came here from Kitchener, Ontario, in 2004.
“I was like a stick person.”
Today, she steps on the scale. 170.4.
Analytical Geometry and Calc II starts in an hour. She has a quiz.
“I better get 10 out of 10.”
Sarah freaks about her grades, even when there’s no reason to freak.
“My friends think I’m psycho. They call me like a nerd because I’m always studying.”
She walks out of the weight room.
The hallway is lined with oil paintings of first team Academic All-Americans.
She takes a left — a few steps away from a portrait of a smiling, volleyball-playing, 4.0 biochemistry major from Canada.
Recoup and relax
She finds a seat in the Hewitt Academic Center computer lab and starts her routine.
She goes over a message about an upcoming exhibition match against Purdue. (They will win 4-1. Sarah will have 19 kills.)
She logs onto Facebook.com, the online yearbook for college students.
“I’m addicted.”
She pulls up an extra credit assignment from Organic Chemistry. She stares at the spectroscopy graph.
“I guess we’re supposed to know what this is by looking at the lines. OK, sweet.”
If she has an A in the class, she can skip the final. She’ll figure out the graph.
Sarah packs up her books and takes a shortcut through South Stadium.
It always smells like sweaty socks, she says.“We were throwing up last week walking through here.”
This is the football shrine. But volleyball players get plenty of glory at Nebraska, too.
Her teammate Dani Busboom grew up here, where girls dress as Husker volleyball players for Halloween.
“Where I’m from, people dress up like Wayne Gretzky.”
If all goes according to plan, one day little girls will dress up as No. 9.
Ever since she can remember, Sarah has been driven to be the best.
In school. In volleyball.
She won’t accept average. Second place? Top 10? Runner-up? Honorable mention?
Forget it.
“When I was 5 years old I had my life planned out.”
Her dad was her coach. Both of her parents played volleyball at the highest levels. But the drive, she says, comes from her.
Why?
“Coach Cook asks me that all the time and I don’t know,” she says. “It’s just me.”
Now she wants to help her team win a national championship. If they don’t, she will feel she has failed.
Two-time volleyball All-American?
Not good enough.
“I want to be the best player that’s ever left this program. I’ve worked my whole life for this.”
Last time she got a B?
Never.
K+1 to the 10th divided by 2(k+1)
Sarah sits in the back row of Room 204 in Oldfather Hall. She sharpens her pencil. She messes with her cuticles. She lines up a meeting for a group project with a couple of other back-row students.
She does not doodle.
She’s one of only three women in the class. Math 107 is full of engineering majors, she says.
The instructor starts the review. The problems take up half the blackboard.
Nearly everyone else is finished when Sarah takes her quiz to the front of the room.
She dials Canada on her way down the stairs.
“Daddy. Hey. Hello. I just took my math quiz. I think I might have lost the perfect now.”
She calls her dad every day after math.
They talk about summer school and summer volleyball tournaments and this afternoon’s practice.
It’s time to say goodbye.
“So do I worry about my math quiz? Cuz I’m seriously panicking.”
Training table time
Sarah is back at the Hewitt Center. She walks the same path every day in her size 11 Adidas.
The volleyball Bermuda Triangle: Hewitt Center. Class. Coliseum. Hewitt Center. Class. Coliseum.
She takes a tray at the training table. She makes a giant fajita and fills two bowls with fruit.
Teammate Rachel Holloway sits across the table.
Tracy Stalls sits down, too. Sarah eyes her food.
“Is that jambalaya?”
“Have you ever tried it?”
Sarah makes a face.
“The gag face,” Tracy says. A Pavan trademark.
One of the players says she’s been having heartburn.
“Aren’t we like too young to be having heartburn?” Dani Busboom asks.
“It’s not from your heart,” Sarah explains. “It’s from the stomach acid coming up.”
Tracy points her fork.
“Oh, you biology major.”
Nucleotide excision repair and all that jazz
Another quiz. This one in Cell Structure and Function.
And tomorrow, a test.
Sarah is taking 12 credit hours this semester. She wants to graduate in four years, so she takes summer school, too.
Maybe she’ll be a pediatrician someday. She plans to play pro volleyball as long as she can. Maybe coach after that.
Volleyball is totally her life. She can’t remember not playing, ever.
So it’s class. Study. Workouts in the weight room. Study. Three-hour practices six days a week. Study.
Sari Raber, a soccer player, is in this class. The instructor is handing back old quizzes.
I bet I did worse than you, Sarah says.
They shake.
Sari gets her quizzes back: 18/20 and 20/20.
Sarah gets hers: 20/20 and 20/20.
Sari wins the bet. Sari always wins the bet. Sarah always wins the points.
Take 10
Practice starts at 3:30, so Sarah can nap for 45 minutes in the locker room.
When she gets to the Coliseum, half the volleyball team is on the sidewalk, working on their tans.
Hey, Pav! C’mon!
“The sun is going to sap up your energy and you’ll be dead for practice.”
She joins them anyway.
They start yelling at guys passing by.
Hey! Do you want to lay with us?
“I have class,” a guy in a ballcap yells back.
Sarah watches him go.
“He so wanted to.”
Practice makes national championship contenders
How do you get swagger, Sarah? Coach John Cook asks.
Sarah and her teammates stand in a circle in the Coliseum, ankles taped, knees braced, ready for practice.
She screws up her face. “You get swagger when you come right back the next time.”
Sarah lists goals for today’s practice. Have swagger. Be aggressive. Communicate. Work as a team.
OK, Pavie. Let’s get ’em going.
The team stretches. Sarah and Tracy pair up for a game of pepper. Pass. Set. Hit. Pass. Set. Hit.
More drills. Water break. Scrimmage. Water. Scrimmage. Run.
Cool down.
Coach gathers the team.
Sarah, how’d we do?
She gives swagger a 10. Communication a 10. Aggressive a 9.
“We were real good today,” Cook says.
Sarah stops in the training room before her shower.
Tomorrow is going to be a great day. It’s the weekend. Her test will be over.
She’s heading home now. She’ll eat dinner. Call her dad. And then hit the books for her biology test.
She pauses for a minute before taking off her gear.
“I’m kind of panicking.”
Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.
About Academic All-Americans* Started in 1962.
* Nebraska leads the nation with 226.
* The first team is made up of 88 collegiate athletes annually. Football receives the most first-team spots, with 24; volleyball gets six.
* This past season two of the six were Huskers: Sarah Pavan and Christina Houghtelling.
* Two Nebraska football players also were named to the first team: Dane Todd and Kurt Mann.
* Individuals whose teams have not finished spring seasons have not yet been named.
