BYU volleyball: Sterling Silva — Cougar spiker is hoping to go gold with Venezuela

PROVO — For volleyball player Joel Silva, the road to the 2008 Beijing Olympics started in a remote central Venezuelan town and made key stops in Thailand, Missouri, Utah and Argentina before reaching China this summer.

All to compete in a sport Silva — BYU's two-year starter at libero — initially eschewed as being somewhat effeminate.

Silva played nearly a dozen different sports growing up on the courts, fields and dirt roads outside of San Fernando de Apure, favoring the national favorite "beisbol." As a young teenager, he only agreed to try the likes of basketball, soccer and volleyball when state officials scoured local schools looking to field regional teams for cross-country competition and students were offered extra-credit academic points.

Already towering at 6-foot-2 over fellow 13-year-olds, Silva seemed destined to shine at either basketball or volleyball but tried to avoid the latter. "I didn't like it then," he recalled. "I used to say it was a women's sport."

He not only made the Apure volleyball team as an outside hitter but later was invited to join the national volleyball program, requiring him to leave his family and hometown and move several hundred miles away to the capital city of Caracas.

Silva didn't exceed his 6-2 height — "I still feel really tall when I go home," he says — and was forced to switch from hitter to defensive specialist as he progressed among the age-specific national youth squads en route to his 2003 high school graduation.

Since Venezuelan universities cater mostly to academics rather than sports and activities, Silva knew he was facing a choice — to either attend college full-time or continue with the national volleyball program, which practiced twice daily, six days a week.

Instead, he opted to do both, pursuing collegiate volleyball in the United States. One possibility he considered, among others, was Brigham Young University — he remembered having watched the Cougars on ESPN win the NCAA title in 2001 and barely lose to Lewis in the '03 championship match.

But after making contacts and sending out volleyball videos, cultural challenges resulted in early setbacks — Silva struggled initially to meet English proficiency standards and didn't have access to funds in U.S. dollars to pay registration fees.

Instead, he ended up in Missouri at Park University, which has a top NAIA volleyball program. Becoming a member of Venezuela's senior national team in 2005, Silva didn't play at Park while working on passing English tests and gaining academic standing. During an international tournament in Thailand, he met Puerto Rico's Ivan Perez, who was BYU-bound and suggested Silva consider the Cougar program.