Sarah Pavan struggles with scrutiny
The most decorated female athlete in school history stood behind a lone microphone.
Wearing a gray Nebraska volleyball T-shirt, her sandy hair pulled into a tight ponytail, the 6-foot-5 outside hitter struggled to answer the questions she had come to loathe.
Winning the 2006-07 Collegiate Woman of the Year Award had once again thrust her into the spotlight, a place where she had never felt secure, that had never done her justice.
Sarah Pavan had just returned from New York City, where she accepted the same award Mia Hamm, Rebecca Lobo and Jackie Joyner-Kersee had won during their collegiate careers.
Now, back in Lincoln, she stood facing the media, and her teammates, teammates who were required to attend by NU volleyball coach John Cook.
But it really didn’t matter who was there or what was asked.
From the moment she arrived in Lincoln, Pavan says she has fought a losing battle in bringing others’ perceptions closer to reality.
Fans judge only what they see from the stands, she points out.
They don’t understand why she doesn’t like the phony smiles and the phony hugs and the phony high-fives after every point. After four years, her teammates don’t understand that she despises the constant attention. And the coaches — they don’t understand what it takes to nail a 4.0 GPA in biochemistry, let alone how much it means to her.
Really, it doesn’t seem to matter what she says or does anymore because — in Pavan’s mind — no one truly understands her.
There are few people Sarah Pavan is close to.
There’s dad, mom and boyfriend — NU All-America high jumper Dusty Jonas — who help fill a void volleyball never can.
But they won’t follow her to Italy, where she’ll go after her May graduation to join a professional team. With her father’s help, Pavan signed a three-year contact recently — the same weekend that Paul Pavan helped change the oil in her car.
When she moves overseas, Pavan won’t know anyone, let alone the language — and the truth is, she’s terrified.
But if Pavan had it her way, she would have come to Lincoln, been successful on the court and in the classroom, and simply blended in.
“She doesn’t gravitate to the limelight,” Paul Pavan said. “She’s always just wanted people to recognize her for what she does. ‘Acknowledge the fact that I play volleyball and do it well, but now leave me alone.’”
But it doesn’t work that way when you’re a four-time All-American, national player of the year and national champion.
***
So when all the questions had been asked, she stepped away from the podium and nervously approached her teammates — what was left of them.
While she chatted with her best friend, former setter Rachel Holloway, several of the players, well, “they just ducked out.”
In fact, Pavan said she can’t remember a time when her teammates acknowledged an honor she had received.
“Oh, I’ve never been congratulated for anything I’ve gotten,” she said. “I’ve actually had it said to me before, ‘Why do you have to get every award that there is? You like the attention, don’t you?’ It’s hard because I’m actually the complete opposite. I hate the attention. It’s just hard to see that the people you are around so often don’t even know you.”
After four years of constantly struggling to be one of the girls, to bond with her teammates, Pavan said she felt exhausted, worn down by the frustrations of being the best.
“I don’t think she wanted to make herself above her teammates because with such a small team you don’t want to make people jealous,” said Shamus McKnight, NU’s volleyball media relations director. “She didn’t want to put herself out there because she wanted her teammates to like her.”
But with each award and the endless attention her volleyball skills attracted, Pavan felt more alone, frustrated and cut off from teammates.
“I have felt a lot of resentment,” she said. “I don’t know what I can do about it, you know? I’m not going to change who I am to make other people happy.”
She’s a perfectionist, a worrier, a crier. She’s serious, quiet and attentive. But, perhaps most of all, she is an intense competitor.
During a high school match her senior year in Kitchener, Ontario, Pavan took revenge against a team that had beaten her team earlier. She smashed ball after ball into the faces of her opponents.
Afterward, the opposing coach asked Paul Pavan — her high school coach — if he had taught his daughter sportsmanship.
“I said, ‘She didn’t do anything wrong. She remained focused for a whole match. What do you want her to do? Say, ‘OK, now I’m going to relax?’ That’s not Sarah.’”
So who exactly is Sarah Pavan?
After four years of coaching Pavan, Cook said he thinks he knows her pretty well.
“I think Sarah thinks that people don’t understand her,” Cook said. “I don’t know if it’s true. She’s a very intense competitor, very focused, driven and sometimes, especially on a women’s team, that can come across wrong.”
Wrong in the sense that Pavan doesn’t especially enjoy cheering after every point or clapping after a mistake. During the last four years, she has been criticized for her lack of emotion on the court. But even more frustrating, she has been nagged by coaches and teammates.
On Dec. 15, 2005, she told the Journal Star: “Here they were expecting me to be loud, excited and going crazy all the time, and I had to say, ‘Listen, that’s not me.’ I struggled hearing every day that you have to start cheering.”
More than two years later, little has changed. In Canada, getting a win was enough, she said, but here, every success is blown out of proportion.
“If we’re getting beat I’m not going to still have a smile on my face and pretend we’re doing well,” she said. “People still couldn’t understand that, even this past season. They ask like, ‘Why aren’t you smiling? Aren’t you happy?’ I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that.”
Sometimes no smile simply meant no sleep.
Even now, without the stress of volleyball, she fears losing the 4.0 GPA she’s worked so hard to achieve.
She can remember times when she would walk into practice after studying all night and Cook would wonder what was wrong.
“I think the support Nebraska gives the volleyball and football program is really good, but academics should be first,” Paul Pavan said. “I told Coach Cook her first year here, and a little while ago, and I’d tell him again that, ‘You coached her four years, but you will never understand her.’ He may disagree, but he will never, ever understand her.”
But balancing Pavan’s success with the team and other individuals was a test for the two-time national champion coach, who sports a seven-year record of 217-15.
For Pavan, receiving every honor possible as a junior made coming back for her senior year exhausting before it ever began.
But, for her teammates, the constant attention she received made them feel left behind. Outside hitter Jordan Larson, once the second-ranked high school volleyball player in the country, considers herself decent friends with her graduating teammate.
“It was hard,” said Larson, a All-American as a junior. “It was so hard, but you just can’t dwell on the fact. There will always be someone out there that is better than you, and you have to accept it and focus on improving yourself. But it was hard.”
In the end, the pressure, resentment and all-nighters eventually took their toll on Pavan. The black-leather couches in Cook’s office soaked up a river of Pavan’s tears throughout the last four years.
“Everybody thinks you have these great players and you’ve got Sarah Pavan, that coaching is easy — you just roll the ball out there,” Cook said. “But there are challenges on every team and we had to learn how to handle expectations.
“Sometimes women have a hard time with (Pavan’s intensity) because women want to be the pack and bond together. On men’s teams it’s different. They don’t care.”
In the end, it comes down to dynamics, Paul Pavan said.
In high school, Sarah’s teammates understood they needed their star to win. But they also understood they would never get as much attention. In fact, these were the same girls who brought their shy, quiet star out of her shell long enough to karaoke “Mambo No. 5” at their end-of-the-year banquet.
But at Nebraska, Paul Pavan said, the experience was different.
“I think every athlete has goals to be the best they can be,” he said. “What I think all athletes should understand is that in the end, only one person gets that award.”
Katelyn Kerkhove is a senior in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communication. She wrote this piece for redwire magazine, a student publication. Reach her at kckerkhove@hotmail.com.
Wearing a gray Nebraska volleyball T-shirt, her sandy hair pulled into a tight ponytail, the 6-foot-5 outside hitter struggled to answer the questions she had come to loathe.
Winning the 2006-07 Collegiate Woman of the Year Award had once again thrust her into the spotlight, a place where she had never felt secure, that had never done her justice.
Sarah Pavan had just returned from New York City, where she accepted the same award Mia Hamm, Rebecca Lobo and Jackie Joyner-Kersee had won during their collegiate careers.
Now, back in Lincoln, she stood facing the media, and her teammates, teammates who were required to attend by NU volleyball coach John Cook.
But it really didn’t matter who was there or what was asked.
From the moment she arrived in Lincoln, Pavan says she has fought a losing battle in bringing others’ perceptions closer to reality.
Fans judge only what they see from the stands, she points out.
They don’t understand why she doesn’t like the phony smiles and the phony hugs and the phony high-fives after every point. After four years, her teammates don’t understand that she despises the constant attention. And the coaches — they don’t understand what it takes to nail a 4.0 GPA in biochemistry, let alone how much it means to her.
Really, it doesn’t seem to matter what she says or does anymore because — in Pavan’s mind — no one truly understands her.
There are few people Sarah Pavan is close to.
There’s dad, mom and boyfriend — NU All-America high jumper Dusty Jonas — who help fill a void volleyball never can.
But they won’t follow her to Italy, where she’ll go after her May graduation to join a professional team. With her father’s help, Pavan signed a three-year contact recently — the same weekend that Paul Pavan helped change the oil in her car.
When she moves overseas, Pavan won’t know anyone, let alone the language — and the truth is, she’s terrified.
But if Pavan had it her way, she would have come to Lincoln, been successful on the court and in the classroom, and simply blended in.
“She doesn’t gravitate to the limelight,” Paul Pavan said. “She’s always just wanted people to recognize her for what she does. ‘Acknowledge the fact that I play volleyball and do it well, but now leave me alone.’”
But it doesn’t work that way when you’re a four-time All-American, national player of the year and national champion.
***
So when all the questions had been asked, she stepped away from the podium and nervously approached her teammates — what was left of them.
While she chatted with her best friend, former setter Rachel Holloway, several of the players, well, “they just ducked out.”
In fact, Pavan said she can’t remember a time when her teammates acknowledged an honor she had received.
“Oh, I’ve never been congratulated for anything I’ve gotten,” she said. “I’ve actually had it said to me before, ‘Why do you have to get every award that there is? You like the attention, don’t you?’ It’s hard because I’m actually the complete opposite. I hate the attention. It’s just hard to see that the people you are around so often don’t even know you.”
After four years of constantly struggling to be one of the girls, to bond with her teammates, Pavan said she felt exhausted, worn down by the frustrations of being the best.
“I don’t think she wanted to make herself above her teammates because with such a small team you don’t want to make people jealous,” said Shamus McKnight, NU’s volleyball media relations director. “She didn’t want to put herself out there because she wanted her teammates to like her.”
But with each award and the endless attention her volleyball skills attracted, Pavan felt more alone, frustrated and cut off from teammates.
“I have felt a lot of resentment,” she said. “I don’t know what I can do about it, you know? I’m not going to change who I am to make other people happy.”
She’s a perfectionist, a worrier, a crier. She’s serious, quiet and attentive. But, perhaps most of all, she is an intense competitor.
During a high school match her senior year in Kitchener, Ontario, Pavan took revenge against a team that had beaten her team earlier. She smashed ball after ball into the faces of her opponents.
Afterward, the opposing coach asked Paul Pavan — her high school coach — if he had taught his daughter sportsmanship.
“I said, ‘She didn’t do anything wrong. She remained focused for a whole match. What do you want her to do? Say, ‘OK, now I’m going to relax?’ That’s not Sarah.’”
So who exactly is Sarah Pavan?
After four years of coaching Pavan, Cook said he thinks he knows her pretty well.
“I think Sarah thinks that people don’t understand her,” Cook said. “I don’t know if it’s true. She’s a very intense competitor, very focused, driven and sometimes, especially on a women’s team, that can come across wrong.”
Wrong in the sense that Pavan doesn’t especially enjoy cheering after every point or clapping after a mistake. During the last four years, she has been criticized for her lack of emotion on the court. But even more frustrating, she has been nagged by coaches and teammates.
On Dec. 15, 2005, she told the Journal Star: “Here they were expecting me to be loud, excited and going crazy all the time, and I had to say, ‘Listen, that’s not me.’ I struggled hearing every day that you have to start cheering.”
More than two years later, little has changed. In Canada, getting a win was enough, she said, but here, every success is blown out of proportion.
“If we’re getting beat I’m not going to still have a smile on my face and pretend we’re doing well,” she said. “People still couldn’t understand that, even this past season. They ask like, ‘Why aren’t you smiling? Aren’t you happy?’ I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that.”
Sometimes no smile simply meant no sleep.
Even now, without the stress of volleyball, she fears losing the 4.0 GPA she’s worked so hard to achieve.
She can remember times when she would walk into practice after studying all night and Cook would wonder what was wrong.
“I think the support Nebraska gives the volleyball and football program is really good, but academics should be first,” Paul Pavan said. “I told Coach Cook her first year here, and a little while ago, and I’d tell him again that, ‘You coached her four years, but you will never understand her.’ He may disagree, but he will never, ever understand her.”
But balancing Pavan’s success with the team and other individuals was a test for the two-time national champion coach, who sports a seven-year record of 217-15.
For Pavan, receiving every honor possible as a junior made coming back for her senior year exhausting before it ever began.
But, for her teammates, the constant attention she received made them feel left behind. Outside hitter Jordan Larson, once the second-ranked high school volleyball player in the country, considers herself decent friends with her graduating teammate.
“It was hard,” said Larson, a All-American as a junior. “It was so hard, but you just can’t dwell on the fact. There will always be someone out there that is better than you, and you have to accept it and focus on improving yourself. But it was hard.”
In the end, the pressure, resentment and all-nighters eventually took their toll on Pavan. The black-leather couches in Cook’s office soaked up a river of Pavan’s tears throughout the last four years.
“Everybody thinks you have these great players and you’ve got Sarah Pavan, that coaching is easy — you just roll the ball out there,” Cook said. “But there are challenges on every team and we had to learn how to handle expectations.
“Sometimes women have a hard time with (Pavan’s intensity) because women want to be the pack and bond together. On men’s teams it’s different. They don’t care.”
In the end, it comes down to dynamics, Paul Pavan said.
In high school, Sarah’s teammates understood they needed their star to win. But they also understood they would never get as much attention. In fact, these were the same girls who brought their shy, quiet star out of her shell long enough to karaoke “Mambo No. 5” at their end-of-the-year banquet.
But at Nebraska, Paul Pavan said, the experience was different.
“I think every athlete has goals to be the best they can be,” he said. “What I think all athletes should understand is that in the end, only one person gets that award.”
Katelyn Kerkhove is a senior in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communication. She wrote this piece for redwire magazine, a student publication. Reach her at kckerkhove@hotmail.com.
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