‘Team USA was always the dream’: The son of immigrants, Juda proud to represent his country in the Olympics

For as long as he can remember, Deerfield resident Paul Juda has been traveling to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Last Saturday, in the second and final day of the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Trials at the Target Center in Minneapolis, the Stevenson High School graduate became an Olympian, earning one of the five coveted spots on the U.S. team.

“I can remember going to the U.S. Olympic Training Center since I was about 10 years old and every single time you’re there you see the rings, you see Olympic photos, there are quotes everywhere, you eat in the same cafeterias (of world-class athletes) and you see the pool where Michael Phelps trained,” he said. “You see all that stuff and it’s great to look at, but I’ve said it before, it’s one thing for people to tell you that you know you could do it and another thing to go out and actually do it. So to represent the country, I’m a huge patriot. I love this country with my heart and soul. I do everything in my life to try to create the future I want to try to have in this country.”

Juda’s parents immigrated from Poland.

“My girlfriend’s dad said, ‘You know, Paul, why don’t you go and try to represent (Team) Poland,’ but what he didn’t get is that I would know it as a cop out,” he said. “It would be going for a goal that isn’t really scary. It would have an asterisk and I don’t mean that with any slight to Team Poland by any means, because they are a fantastic country and a part of my identity. But I grew up in America. I was born here. I’m a U.S.-born American citizen. Born and raised here and everything, so Team USA was always the dream.”

On New Year’s Day earlier this year, Juda wrote “Become an Olympian” on his marker board.

It was quite an ambitious goal, especially considering that injuries the past two years forced him to miss his senior season at the University of Michigan after claiming the 2022 NCAA all-around title.

“I’ve heard so many people say if you write down a goal and it doesn’t scare you, it might not be big enough,” he said. “And to write down (’Become an Olympian’) was hard. I wrote it six months ago and six months seems like a (heck) of a long time ago. I started the countdown timer on my phone for 283 days, so that was the end of the World Championships.”

The results from the 2024 Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships in Fort Worth, Texas, from May 30-June 2 were combined with the competition during the Olympic Trials to select the U.S. team, which includes Asher Hong, Brody Malone, Stephen Nedoroscik and Fred Richards.

“Contrary to other sports where the Trials is everything, this year we decided to use all four competitions because of the fact that gymnastics is a pretty hot and cold sport, especially if you’re going to be pushing for extremely difficult routines, you want to give yourself a wee bit of wiggle room,” Juda said. “We decided as a national team to use the top three out of four scores and average those and that be one set of scores that determines the highest scoring team possible and the other team scoring scenario we used was all four scores so you get kind of your total score and I guess you could say you factor in if you had any falls or whatnot.”

Juda counted falls on high bar and vault, two of his stronger events, during the first day of the 2024 Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships.

“Those two falls kind of derailed me, but it’s gymnastics,” he said. “I take up golf in my free time and I’ve been really trying to emulate that nobody wins the major championships without a couple of bogeys, so I just realized that and still had the opportunity to hit the rest of my remaining sets.”

Which he really needed to do to become an Olympian.

“From that second day of competition (at the 2024 Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships) and both competitions at the Olympic Trials, I was really able to get no falls and go pretty much without any drastic errors.”

Juda nailed all of his routines last week, going 12-for-12, which included second place on floor, third on pommel horse, fourth on vault and fifth on high bar. He was fourth overall with 168.85 points.

As much as he wanted to become an Olympian, Juda’s approach to becoming one required a change his way of thinking. He had fallen short of making the 2021 U.S. team. On Sunday Juda will celebrate his 23rd birthday as an Olympian.

“I wish I could tell you that my goal coming in here was, ‘OK, it’s make the team or not,’ but I had that mindset in 2021 and that kind of was my demise,” he said. “I put way too much emphasis on making the team that I let my goals be very binary — get this score, hit this routine, et cetera, et cetera.”

Before competing in the trials last Thursday and Saturday, Juda made the decision to duke it out.

“Before the Olympic Trials I promised myself two things,” he said. “That I would fight no matter what because you never know what you don’t know because the game isn’t over until the clock stops so the team isn’t going to be decided until all the routines are finished. So my first goal was to fight like (heck) all the way through until the last routine and that also meant trying like crazy not to fall off.”

It also meant having fun.

“I realized in 2021 I didn’t have much fun in that atmosphere (at Trials),” he said. “I didn’t get to soak up any minute of it.”

He’ll be soaking up life as a first generation American representing the USA in Paris later this month.