USC volleyball player teams up with The Players’ Tribune

VYTAS MAZEIKA, Bay Area News Group
USC libero Victoria Garrick (SHP '15) teamed up with the Players' Tribune to produce a video about how to change the way we talk about women's bodies.

“Don’t just look at my body. See my game.”

That’s the message behind a three-minute video released last week on The Players’ Tribune tackling the issue of body image for female athletes.

Victoria Garrick, a senior on the USC women’s volleyball team, co-produced and directed the project.

The 21-year-old grew up in Atherton and attended Sacred Heart Prep, located fewer than 5 miles north of Stanford on El Camino Real.

“I’ve driven on El Camino my whole life, so I just feel really close to home when I’m there,” said Garrick, a 5-foot-10 libero who played her last match at Maples Pavilion barely 24 hours after her video went public.

“My freshman year I definitely think it was more of a goose-bumpy, surreal experience,” added Garrick, who recorded 14 digs and an ace in a five-set victory against the Cardinal in 2015. “It was my first time playing there for what at the time was the No. 1-ranked team in the country, so it was surreal. I had to pinch myself, remembering that seat I sat in the stands just a year prior when I was a high schooler.”

A broadcast and multimedia journalism major, Garrick wrote for her school newspaper The Heart Beat.

“I really like telling stories and connecting people and sharing important experiences that I think are beneficial to larger audiences,” Garrick said. “And I just really like everything about digital media and how much opportunity there is on our phones these days and on Instagram and all these various platforms.”

On her spare time at SHP, she helped create an a cappella group during lunchtime along with a handful of other girls and at USC produces her own podcast “Skipping Practice,” which is currently not published as often as she’d prefer.

“It’s on hiatus until things slow down,” Garrick said.

There’s no longer time to dabble with a cappella, through she picks up a guitar once in a while.

Life on campus is a delicate balance between the classroom and the court as a libero for the 12th-ranked Trojans (11-4, 3-1 Pac-12).

Garrick is also a social-media advocate on Instagram (@victoriagarrick). She gave a TEDx Talk on mental health in athletes and her 2017 article on female body image was published on Good Sports magazine.

“That ties into why I collaborated with The Players’ Tribune despite a demanding school and volleyball schedule,” she said. “It’s because I’m working to create my own brand and advocate for these important issues that I think will really help the next generation of college athletes.”

Garrick conducted interviews with seven other female athletes on campus from a variety of sports — rowing, track, swimming, basketball, volleyball — and got in touch with USC administration and the athletic department to get approval for this endeavor.

It certainly wasn’t on overnight process to co-produce the video.

“I was in touch with one of the editors of The Players’ Tribune almost a year ago and we were discussing ways to continue and expand the conversation around female-athlete body image and helping girls accept their muscular bodies and see them as mechanisms for their elite performance,” Garrick said.

Her oldest brother, Jonathan, is someone Victoria idolized growing up and impacted her growth as an athlete.

The 24-year-old played golf at UCLA and currently finds himself in the qualifying stages of the Web.com Tour.

“I can certainly remember many times where it was a weekend and I was planning to sleep in,” said Garrick, who won a CIF NorCal title as a sophomore at SHP. “But Jonathan came in and woke me up at 7 a.m. and said, ‘I need to go work out, are you coming?’ And I would look at him with a blank face, like, ‘You just woke me up, I was about to sleep in.’ And he said, ‘You’re either getting better or you’re getting worse, but you’re not staying the same.’ And so then I got up, I put on my workout stuff and went with him.”

It’s hard not to find her on the court.

As a libero, she’s the only member of her team wearing a different jersey. This makes it easier for a referee to recognize which player must remain on the back row.

“The libero is allowed to sub for two people in a game, where no one else can do that, so that’s why I wear a different color,” Garrick said. “But I’ve always thought it was funny because whenever I’m at away games and people are heckling me, they’ll yell, ‘You’re wearing the wrong color!’ And I just laugh because I’m thinking, ‘I worked my whole life to wear the wrong color, so thanks for reminding me.’ ”

Garrick ranks fourth in the Pac-12 at 4.65 digs per set, just four-hundredths behind second place.

Over the years, though, she’s learned not to focus solely on numbers.

“I’ve realized in searching for those things and striving for those things, while it is cool to accomplish statistical goals, nothing compares to having an amazing time playing your sport,” Garrick said. “And so this year as a senior my goal is to have fun. I don’t care who’s recognizing me, who’s not recognizing me, what award I’m getting or I’m not getting, I just want to walk away and say that I had the absolute best time my senior year.”

That means sacrificing her body to keep a point alive, even if it means someone else will get more recognition for a kill than her dig.

“When I just focus on doing what I can for the girls around me, I end up playing a lot better,” Garrick said. “And, yeah, it’s not the flashiest role on the court, but it is an important one and I really have a great time doing it.”

It’s a labor of love, much like her collaboration with The Players’ Tribune.

“This has been almost a year in the making and it’s just a three-minute social video,” Garrick said. “But I really do think the message is so powerful and I can’t wait for hopefully thousands of girls to feel understood and feel like they’re not alone.”

Click here to see the Players' Tribune Video...

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Sacred Heart Schools Atherton

Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton

150 Valparaiso Ave
Atherton, CA 94027
650 322 1866
Founded by the Society of the Sacred Heart, SHS is a Catholic, independent, co-ed day school for students in preschool through grade 12