What Paralympians Eyeing Paris Want Girls to Know – Meet Gold Medal Mentor Emma Schieck
Ninety-five days to go.
Ninety-five days and counting until Paris 2024, and athletes training to earn their spot at the games are fully in the zone.
Particularly those who have already won the gold.
All images from USA Women's Sitting Volleyball and Emma Schieck
What do these epic athletes want girls to know about what it feels like to serve the winning shot? How to train and where to find their confidence?
Plenty.
Meet 2020 Paralympian Emma Schieck, a recent graduate of UNC and an athlete on the U.S. Women's National Sitting Volleyball Team readying herself and her team to repeat their stunning Tokyo win in 2020 with back-to-back gold medals.
“We’re going to do it,” she told me with a level gaze when we spoke last month, and every fiber in my body believes her.
Born with what’s called a brachial plexus injury that prevents her from straightening, rotating or bringing her left arm behind her back, Schieck started her athletic career playing middle school soccer and then gravitated quickly to volleyball. When both a high school referee and coach approached her about trying out for sitting volleyball, Shieck initially said no. She loved standing volleyball and didn’t think of herself as an adaptive athlete.
Fast forward to joining the USA Sitting Volleyball Team at age 16 and serving the match-clinching ace that won her team USA gold in the 2020 match against China, and Paralympian Emma Schieck has a story to tell.
Below is an edited version of my conversation with Emma, complete with questions served up by Être girls fascinated by all things Paralympic and Olympic. As we watched the Olympic flame lit last week at the birthplace of the games, I couldn’t wait to share this interview with you.
Ê: Thank you so much for chatting with me today – I know your schedule is crazy these days. Where are you right now?
ES: (laughs) Yeah, I’m everywhere! I’m in Oklahoma City right now, packing for Boston to play some exhibition games. I think we land at 2:30pm and are on the court at 3:30pm, so it’ll be a crazy day.
Ê: Seriously! Well, that leads right into a first question I received from a girl: What’s a typical day like for you when you are training for the Paralympics? What does a day with your sport look like?
ES: So, day to day right now is pretty fun! I spend my mornings at the gym with my team starting anywhere between 6 and 7:30am, and then I’m out of the gym between 10:30 and 12:30pm. From there I head to my job with a really great organization, Parity, where we work to close the gender income opportunity in sports.
Ê: Oh, wait. We have to hear more about that…
ES: Definitely! We have more than 1000 athletes on the platform, and I’m on the Partnerships team. So, I spend my days looking for opportunities for the athletes to work with brands on social media campaigns…keynote speaking virtual panels…you name it, our athletes do it.
Then after my workday with Parity is over, I usually have some sort of other active hour in my evening – whether it’s deep stretching, cardio, or other lifts. Then I eat dinner, shower and in bed early. I’m an eight-hours-of-sleep kind of person right now, which, frankly, everyone should be.
Ê: Wow - that's some schedule! Did you always play for the love of the game?
ES: Yes, but up until my sophomore year of high school I never thought I’d play volleyball past high school. My off-court career was really important to me, and I wasn’t aware of what was going on in the Paralympic world. So, I didn’t think my future was in the world of sports. Once I realized that it could be – that I could be an athlete and work in the sports industry, that changed everything.
“Ultimately the goal I have for women in sports is to be able to be an athlete and financially sustain their families, so I really love what I do both on and off the court.”
Ê: We’ve heard the story about the first person to get you into sitting volleyball – was that coach also your first mentor?
ES: Yes – definitely, Linda Crucitti. She was my very first mentor and really changed my life. I was seven, going into third grade, and the school was having this sports try-out day. I’m in a brand new school, no one is talking to me, and I wanted to try everything so badly. I loved all sports!
But my mom was nervous about me trying volleyball with my disability, so she sort of pulled Linda aside in the beginning and said, I don’t know if this is going to be good for her, because she has this arm thing, and before my mom could even finish Linda just pulled me away and said She’ll be absolutely fine.
And I was.
Linda became my first volleyball coach, she taught me how to swim because she new it'd be hard with my arm…she was just a mentor in every way. She passed away with cancer right before my seventh grade volleyball tryouts.
“Having a mentor at such a young age, relying on that mentor, and then losing that mentor and having to navigate the very world she brought me into was definitely challenging for 12-year-old me. But she taught me everything, and I say it all the time. Linda is absolutely the reason I’m doing what I’m doing.”
Ê: And then you moved to sitting volleyball.
ES: Yeah, I always say I didn’t choose sitting volleyball. Sitting volleyball 100% chose me. I was playing standing in 2017 in Georgia at a Big South qualifier with my team, and a referee approached me about my arm. He started showing me pictures of sitting volleyball and I happened to go to high school with a girl who was on the youth national team.
I wasn’t interested at all, at first, but their coach kept talking to me and to my parents about it, and the next thing I knew I was in Virginia with the program giving the sport a try! I've met the most amazing people and I wouldn't trade my sport for anything.
Ê: Do you wish you’d been exposed to sitting volleyball sooner?
ES: Absolutely. 1000% yes. That’s one of my biggest goals in terms of the next generations of Paralympians – I want them to know about the game and all their options sooner. I want the next generation of Paralympians, especially younger girls, to know that teen training programs exist and that one day they could be on the national team with us.
I would love to see high school students and middle school students play my sport in their PE classes. Or if you have a volleyball team, they should be sitting down and playing once a month. Objectively, from a skill standpoint, you will become a better standing volleyball player if you play sitting volleyball.
Ê: That's so smart! Okay, last question from a girl: What’s the best piece of mentor advice someone has shared with you?
ES: Nice! The best piece of advice actually came in the form of a question: a coach early in my career asked us to remember why we play? She told us to keep a volleyball journal and write down why we play. She said we should remember our why every single day and take it with us everywhere.
So my advice to young girls would be: Remember your WHY.
And as we ended our conversation together, Emma Schieck’s last line stayed in my mind.
Remember your why. Spectacular advice for all of us – whether striving for the podium in Paris or just our next promotion.
Why do you do what you do?
Why do you love it so?
Why is it deeply integral to who you want to be?
Thought-provoking and profound as we head down the path to Paris and wait to see who will represent each nation. For me, hearing directly from athletes like Emma makes me more excited than ever for the epic mentors that girls will see winning gold.
Looking forward to 95 days,
Illana
ÊXTRAS: Three additional resources for adaptive sports recommended by Emma Schieck you won't want to miss: Athlete spotlights and the latest news from Partity, role models and mentors from Voice in Sport (whose founder Stef Strack is featured in The Epic Mentor Guide), and events and programming through The Challenged Athletes Foundation.
