Bump, set, Brazil: TWU volleyball players look forward to food, scrimmages and a stronger sisterhood

The whole team leaves Thursday to travel to Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro before returning June 24. They’ll play five scrimmage games against Brazilian clubs in both locations, including with the volleyball club Andrade grew up in.

They’ll teach young Brazilian athletes some of their American volleyball techniques as part of the community service component of the trip. They’ll do a little touring and, they said, lots of feasting on native cuisine they’ve heard and read a lot about.

“I’m learning how to say the different food I want to try, for sure. We’ve all been working on the Portuguese,” said senior Lexi Williams, a pin hitter on the Pioneers team.

Dutra, who is a freshman outside hitter, dreamed of playing in the United States while she was growing up. But in her last few years of school, she decided she really wanted to study. In Brazil, volleyball players generally have to either quit to attend higher education or forgo university studies to play professionally. Dutra said to do both, she’d need to play for an American college team.

At TWU, she’s balancing athletics with a degree that can prepare her for international business.

“I decided that I wanted to study and not to play pro volleyball. But I didn’t want to give up volleyball,” Dutra said. “So I just chose to come here.”

She was hooked when she met TWU’s coaching staff and some of the players on a video call.

“The girls were very welcoming to me at first, they were very welcoming. Lu [Andrade] and [head coach] Jeff [Huebner] were extremely good to me,” she said. “They talked to me, my parents, and we had a conversation about every type of stuff.

“I think that this place, like, gave me the confidence that I would be loved and welcomed and everything would be taken care right away.”

Juniors Lizzy Reed, a setter, and Malia Viernes, who plays right side, and Williams concurred with Dutra about the team. They describe the Pioneer volleyball team as a family — a group of women who know how to play the game but also take care of one another.

“I’ve never been part of a team like this,” said Viernes, who arrived at TWU through junior college volleyball. “The girls care about each other here. We’ve all had our struggles, and here, we really embrace them together. I feel like here, on this team — the fight is in everyone. It’s in all of us.”

The arrival of Dutra and França — who continue the team’s more recent trend of recruiting Brazilian players — opened the team up to the nuances of the sport and how the two countries develop their players.

“Brazil is one of the top countries in the world in volleyball,” Reed said. “They have some of the best athletes. But they play the game different there than we do here.”

“Yeah,” Williams said. “In America, we’re really about the technique. You have to do everything a certain way. Everyone is supposed to look the same when they play and move the ball. But in Brazil, it’s different. They aren’t as much about technique.”

Dutra said Brazilian volleyball players train to get the ball where it needs to be.

“In Brazil, it’s like, ‘This is where you want the ball to end up. Now work together to get it there,’” she said.

Viernes recalled one of the first practices with Dutra, whose nickname is “Duta.”

“I’m not sure how to describe it,” she said. “I want to say she was more relaxed. All of us, the American players, we were, like, intense. Everything about us was intense, you know. Ready.

“And then the ball came to Duta and she just moved it so fast. It was like she was relaxed and then almost out of nowhere moved the ball.”

Andrade said she is looking forward to introducing “her girls” to her friends and family.

“Since I got here two years ago, they’ve heard me brag about these girls. They’ve heard how proud of them I am and we all are of the program. Now they get to meet them,” Andrade said. “Selfishly, I get to go home, and show the team a little bit of my background and their teammates’ background. They get to experience what our other players have here, too. And for our Brazilian players, their lives are changing in so many ways. They don’t often get the chance to show their families what they are doing here.”

Huebner said he wanted to continue the university’s tradition of traveling to another country once every four years. He looks at the trip as a project that exemplifies TWU values.

“The school has seven core values, and global mindset is part of who we are,” Huebner said. “The trip, it’s good for their confidence. It’s good for their self-worth. It’s good to teach them how to be uncomfortable in a safe space with other people who are uncomfortable. And that’s the goal of what we do in our program, and I think what our coaching staff as a whole at TWU is great at, comfortably pushing people outside of their comfort zone.”