The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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JUNE / JULY 2022 THE WOLVERINE 59 OLYMPIC SPORTS BY CLAYTON SAYFIE M ichigan junior Paul Juda salvaged what wasn't his best performance on the pommel horse (13.033 score) at the NCAA Finals April 16, using the en- durance he worked so hard to attain to stay on as long as he could. He had two routines left, and Michi- gan was still within striking distance of winning the team national title, needing a strong finish and for Stanford to falter. Individually, Juda sat in second place in the all-around competition standings behind Stanford's Brody Malone — a 10- time NCAA champion who represented the United States in the 2020 Olympic Games. Juda peered up at the scoreboard and saw his name below Malone's. He knew there was work to be done. "Did I come this far to just come this far?" he asked himself. "All this, just for second place?" He put on his Michigan athletics parka, slid the hood over his head and, in deep thought, stared at his feet while walking to his next event, the still rings. "This is where we do it," he told him- self. "This is where my story begins." He then repeated the same thing, out loud, to teammate Cameron Bock: "This is where my story begins." "Maybe part of me was thinking I was talking about the team, because I had realized that if Stanford had a couple faults on pommel horse and rings, and we had our best two rotations possible, we could take it," Juda explained. "But in retrospect, now that I think about it, I was talking about myself, too." Channeling all-time great athletes Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Tom Brady, he said, Juda had a fierce and de- termined look on his face while warm- ing up for the rings. "I remember looking at Jordan [Gaa- renstroom], our assistant coach, and him going, 'Hey, you can smile. It's al- right. Go ahead and smile.' And I just shook my head at him and said, 'No.' And he said, 'Oh my God, you look like a villain.' And I went, 'Because I am one.' "He was like, 'OK, dude's in killer mode.'" Juda finished eighth on still rings, but he kept his focus and saved his best for last. In the vault, his final routine, Juda stuck his landing, won the event with a 15.000 score and also clinched the all- around title at the same time. Beforehand, he was back under his hood, separated from the team. After- ward, he was looking at his feet, in dis- belief he had stuck the landing, before hugging his coaches and sprinting over to his teammates. He hopped into the air and pumped his fist — like Jordan, Bryant and Brady — knowing he was an NCAA champion. "I think I blacked out before I went to vault," Juda said. "I remember salut- ing and trying to hear the guys behind me, but I couldn't make out any actual words; it was all pretty much muffled noise. They were only 10 feet from me, and I just could not hear them. "I just remember running down the vault runway, and after I had landed, I looked down at my feet and realized what I had done. … I remember tell- ing myself, 'This is not the time to take a leap or a hop. Keep your feet on the ground.' I looked down at my feet and saw them not moving. [I had] an over- whelming amount of emotions running through me. "To win it on a stick, a lot of the coaches of other programs were con- gratulating me on, 'What a perfect way to end the meet.' That's probably going to go down in my top five best moments of my life. Right now, it's top one." And Juda was the "top one" in all- around and the vault, marking U-M's Paul Juda Sticks One Landing, Earns Two National Titles Juda, a junior from Deerfield, Ill., won individual championships in both the vault and all- around competitions to lead U-M to a third-place finish in the NCAA Finals April 16. PHOTO COURTESY MICHIGAN PHOTOGRAPHY