‘Why can’t that be me?’ Chicago-area native Paul Juda shines in Olympic debut for Team USA gymnastics

PARIS — As a freshman in high school, U.S. gymnast Paul Juda attended a training camp for the junior national team where the coaches instructed the athletes to look around.

“There will be an Olympian in this room,” they said. “There will be a world champion.”

As he looked at the other gymnasts, Juda’s mind opened to the possibilities for someone with his talent and determination. He purchased an Olympic flag soon after and hung it in the bedroom of his family’s Deerfield home as a reminder of his potential.

“​​I knew if the coaches were saying it, they meant it,” Juda told the Tribune. “I was, like, why can’t that be me?”

There were, of course, a lot of reasons why it wouldn’t have been Juda.

He’s a first-generation American, the son of Polish immigrants who didn’t know much about the sport before he became involved with it. He had been with the same club, around the same coaches since he was 4, when his parents put him in tumbling with the modest goal of tiring out their youngest — and most energetic — child.

The elite-level competitions, let alone the Olympics, were never part of the original plan.

Still, Juda thought, why not him?

He took the flag with him to his freshman dorm at the University of Michigan, and it has been on display everywhere he has lived since. It has hung throughout a stellar NCAA career, two devastating injuries and the disappointment of being left off the U.S. Olympic squad in 2021.

“It was just there to remind me that … I could be that one in a million,” he said.

The flag, indeed, proved prophetic as Juda, 23, gave a stellar performance in his Olympic debut Saturday, finishing fourth overall in his qualifying round and very likely earning himself a spot in the all-around competition. With First Lady Jill Biden cheering in the stands, he was a solid presence throughout the competition, putting down six solid routines where some of his teammates faltered.

With eight countries still left to compete Saturday afternoon, the United States remains in the medal hunt. The top eight finishers in the qualifying rounds advance to the team finals Monday.

“I’m going to be that guy that can just keep it steady, keep the pace and set the tone when needed,” Juda said shortly after arriving in Paris. “I don’t have the hardest gymnastics (on the team), but we’ve all earned our own spots. We all have our own stories.”

Paul Juda’s story begins with his father, Jozef, who grew up one of six kids on a small farm in southern Poland. With steady, decent-paying jobs hard to find, he decided to move to Chicago, a city with a vibrant Polish population and a reputation for welcoming Eastern European immigrants.

A certified electrician, he arrived in the 1980s and quickly found a union job. He didn’t speak English at the time and had no immediate relatives in the U.S., but he worked hard and earned enough to support himself and send money to his family back home.

“My father worked his farm with just two horses,” Jozef Juda said. “But I was doing very well, and I bought him farm machines, a tractor and a car. He told me to stay in America because there would be no opportunities like this for me in Poland.”

Jozef Juda met his future wife, Ewa Bacher, on a return trip to Poland and eventually brought her to live in the Chicago suburbs, where they bought a house in Deerfield and raised their three children. Paul, the baby of the family, showed a natural affinity for gymnastics from a young age, even if his parents didn’t immediately recognize it.

At 4, he was doing splits in the kitchen, jumping on couches and never seeing a monkey bar he didn’t hang on. When he and his mother waited outside the Buffalo Grove Gymnastics and Dance Center for his older siblings, Michael and Kasia, to finish their weekly recreational classes, Paul spent the entire time trying to open the doors and join them.

“I wanted to get in there and be like the older boys who were training without their shirts,” Juda said. “I pushed and pushed on those big glass doors until my mother signed me up for class. I loved it right away. It was a huge energy depletion for me, and I think I gave my mom fewer headaches after that.”

With shirtless tumbling as Juda’s primary objective, the coaches told him he could only do it if he trained hard and made the competition team like those older boys. He began working toward that goal, with recreational classes morphing into daily after-school sessions as he got older.

His parents went along with the trajectory, even if they didn’t quite understand where their son was headed.

“Once-a-week classes became everyday training sessions. Then I started to get invited to competitions, and the coaches told my mom that they wanted me to join the team. She wasn’t sure what they meant,” Juda said with a wry smile. “But they sold her on it by telling her it would be cheaper that way.”

Juda’s gymnastics career became a family effort as he got older, with everyone, including his older siblings, shuttling him to practices and competitions. He recalls how sweaty and tired his father sometimes looked when he’d come straight from work to take him to practice. He knows how his mother, a day care provider, juggled her work responsibilities so he could do everything the sport demanded of him.

He grew so aware of the sacrifice as a middle schooler, he promised his parents he would become a good enough gymnast someday to earn a college scholarship. At the time, Jozef Juda did not know such a thing existed.

“He said, ‘Daddy, you won’t have to pay a penny,’” Jozef Juda said. “I smiled because he had a good heart, but I didn’t believe him.”

By the time he graduated from Adlai E. Stevenson High School in 2019, Juda had won the all-around event twice at the Junior Olympics and earned a silver medal on the still rings at the senior U.S. championships. He received multiple college offers and chose the University of Michigan for its academic programs as much as the men’s gymnastics team.

“He came to me and said, ‘Daddy, remember when we were talking about college? Well, the dream came true,’’’ Jozef Juda recalls. “He knew what he could do and he went out and did it.”

His mother, Ewa Bacher, said getting the scholarship was an effort that extended beyond their immediate family. There were family friends who gave Paul rides and offered moral support when he needed it, she said. And there were gymnastic parents who fed him and took him to long-distance competitions when his parents had to work.

Several of those people traveled to Paris to watch him compete.

“Paul did not make it by himself and he knows this,” his mother said. “He’s not at the Olympics because we moved to the United States. He’s at the Olympics because we moved to the United States and met wonderful, wonderful people who helped us.”

Juda’s success continued at Michigan, where he has been a three-time All-American and won the NCAA all-around championship in 2022. After graduating with a psychology degree in 2023 and beginning a master’s degree in accounting, he has one year of eligibility left and plans to use it next year in the hopes of winning a national title with the team.

His star also rose on the international level while in college, finishing second all-around at the Pan American Games in 2021. The medal earned the U.S. team an additional spot in the Tokyo Games, but the federation named another athlete to the squad.

The rejection stung, Juda said, but he made a point to never complain about it publicly. Instead, he told the media he understood the reasoning, accepted the decision and would be cheering for Team USA.

Some suggested he should compete for Poland, which would offer him an easier path to the Olympics and international teams. Juda, who speaks Polish with his parents and considers his heritage an important part of his identity, says he never considered it.

“I grew up in America,” he said. “I’m a first-generation American. My parents sacrificed so much to earn their citizenship and I don’t take that lightly. I’m Polish American, but I’m American at heart.”

In an interview with the Tribune before the Games, Jozef Juda became emotional as he recalled his son telling him that he wanted to compete for the United States instead of taking the easier path.

“He said, ‘I was born here. I love America. I want to do it for America,’” Jozef Juda said, his voice so choked with emotion he could barely finish the sentence. “I said, ‘Very nice. Very nice.’ I am proud of him for his gymnastics, but I am more proud of him as a person.”

In 2022, Juda hyperextended his knee, forcing him to miss the U.S. championships and ultimately costing him a spot on the world team. He hurt his ankle the following year, causing him to miss his senior season at Michigan.

He battled back from the injuries and competed at the 2023 world championships, where the U.S. team won bronze. Despite that showing, he arrived at the U.S. Olympic trials last month with tempered expectations. He planned to ignore the scores — including his own — and just concentrate on getting the job done.

“In 2021, when I fell short, it was a pretty big blow to my mental and physical and emotional state,” he said. “And afterwards I promised myself that even if I never become an Olympian, I was gonna come back in ’24 and at least become an alternate or something.”

When the final results were tallied and Juda was announced as a member of the U.S. Olympic team, he wept. Videos of him crying went viral , which Juda laughs about with zero regrets.

His father, meanwhile, said he has sent the video to everyone he knows both in the United States and Poland.

“You’ve seen it?” Jozef Juda asked. “I’ve watched it 50 times. It brings me so much happiness. I hope I will be this happy for the rest of my life.”

Paul Juda wept again Saturday when, after the performance of his life, a reporter asked him about his girlfriend, Michigan gymnast Reyna Guggino, and his parents being in the stands. Juda talked about hearing their cheers in the arena and seeing them wave giant cutouts of his head.

Both his parents, like many in his cheering section, sported temporary tattoos with his face on them. His father, Juda said, bought a new red, white and blue shirt for the occasion.

After nailing his open routine on the pommel horse, Juda said looked around the arena so he could share the moment with them.

“When I finally locked eyes with them and I saw them, they were shaking the big heads of me,” he said. “I mean, I got a little emotional…because I was like, they’re all here. They all flew like hundreds and thousands of miles to come see me.”

Both his parents looked to be fighting back tears at various points during the competition. His father acknowledged being overwhelmed by the results.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said. “It was perfect.”

This, Paul Juda says, is his story: An elite athlete inextricably tied to his parents’ dreams of a better, happier life.

“For a first-generation American, like me, it’s hard to describe what this means to me, to my mom, to my dad,” he said. “I still can’t even comprehend sometimes what I’ve done. I guess I’m just gonna keep living the dream.”