Julia Robinson was a valuable member of the varsity as both a junior and senior. Her value did not always show up in the box score. Her teammates and her coaches knew how valuable she was to us. Julia never took off a practice and never took off a drill. Julia is one of the "all-in" kind of people- about everything!
Julia came to every practice with high energy, enthusiasm, and competitiveness. Her approach made her team a better team. In practice, none of the starting group liked to have Julia guard them. Julia made it very tough on them in practice. It made the games much easier for the starters because the person guarding them did not play as hard as Julia had in practice.
Successful teams need players like Julia. Not every player can do what Julia did. It is tough to not play as much as you would like. Julia brought it every day, and took it upon herself to do whatever she thought she could do to make our team better.
Julia graduated at semester and has been in Brazil as an exchange student. I would like to be able to say that I flew to Brazil to talk with her, but we had text exchange.
Julia- I have been in Brazil now for a little over 3 months and I have been living in the city of Caxias do Sul. My city has around 500,000 people. At the moment I am living with a family in the city. I live about 10 minutes away from my school and I don't live too far from the center of my city either. Caxias do Sul is a lot different from Galesburg. Not only is the population a lot different, but the geography is too! Here I live in a more mountainous region whereas back home everything is more flat. When I go on runs here in my neighborhood there is no way to avoid the steep uphills. Because I am living in a big city it is a lot louder than Galesburg, especially at night. I never hear trains but no matter what time it is I always hear cars, dogs, and birds.
Massey- Can you describe your host family?
Massey- I am sure you have had many, many great experiences, but could you describe some of your favorite experiences?
Massey- What is your plan when you return to the United States?
Massey- What advice do you have for next year’s team?
Massey- Can you share with us where you are as an exchange student?
Julia- I have been in Brazil now for a little over 3 months and I have been living in the city of Caxias do Sul. My city has around 500,000 people. At the moment I am living with a family in the city. I live about 10 minutes away from my school and I don't live too far from the center of my city either. Caxias do Sul is a lot different from Galesburg. Not only is the population a lot different, but the geography is too! Here I live in a more mountainous region whereas back home everything is more flat. When I go on runs here in my neighborhood there is no way to avoid the steep uphills. Because I am living in a big city it is a lot louder than Galesburg, especially at night. I never hear trains but no matter what time it is I always hear cars, dogs, and birds.
Massey- Can you describe your host family?
Julia- At the moment I am with my first host family. My host mom is a professor at the University of Caxias do Sul and my host dad is a systems analyst for a company located here in the city. I have 1 host brother who is 13 years old and my other host brother is currently on exchange in Wisconsin and he will return to Brazil in July. At the end of May I will be moving to my second host family. They live in an apartment inside the city and I will have 2 host siblings.
Massey- I am sure you have had many, many great experiences, but could you describe some of your favorite experiences?
Julia- I have had many great experiences here in Brazil but my favorite so far has been my trip to the Amazon. It was a trip for exchange students and so I was able to meet many students also staying in Brazil. In total, there were around 62 exchange students on my trip. We stayed on boats for a week, slept in hammocks, and got to participate in many fun activities like swimming with pink dolphins, visiting an indigenous tribe, fishing for piranhas, and going hiking to visit waterfalls. I had a great time and I was so lucky to meet students from around the world. On my boat, there were students from Germany, Norway, Turkey, Australia, The United States, Taiwan, Denmark, and India.
Massey- What is your plan when you return to the United States?
Julia- While I don't have a specific return date yet, the plan is for me to stay here for Christmas and return in early to mid-January after the New Year. When I return home I will work as a CNA until the following fall when I start attending the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. I will be majoring in Nutrition and Health with the College of ACES and working towards a nursing degree.
Julia- Advice for next year’s players is to go out and have fun. It doesn’t matter how much playing time you get. Everyone has a role on the team. Sometimes being a positive energy and an encourager is your role and it is just as important as other roles. You only get to be on the team for so long so enjoy every moment because it goes by so quickly. Learn from every loss and never stop trying to be a better player, teammate, and person. Celebrate the wins but don’t let it get in the way of learning new skills or practicing your old ones.
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