Eduardo Romay, captain of the volleyball team: “Peru has sexism towards men’s volleyball and no one else” | INTERVIEW

When Eduardo Romay began to generate content on Tik Tok, in the midst of confinement due to the pandemic, his intention was nothing more than to receive the anguishing moment that the world was living and hit boredom with a mate. The platform that had an unstoppable growth was, in principle, the place where he could show himself as he is and make his sport known. Twitter also became his ally. But there came a time when his life purpose took a turn and now the captain of the Peruvian men’s volleyball team is an ambassador for his sport on social networks. He seeks, from his trench, to change society and that a man arming or killing over a net is not frowned upon. At 27, Eduardo feels that he has already passed the path of thorns and now seeks to help others to do so.

—You played in Peru, then in Saudi Arabia, Spain, Austria and now they’re in Turkey. Has the change in sports culture been abrupt?

It’s hard. When I started my journey, the reference I had was national volleyball, where it is not professional. We are on the way to be, but there is still a long way to go. So I went from being here to arriving at a foreign club with all the demands that it deserves. They pay you and expect that the one who performs the most is you. That shocked me from the start when I went to Saudi Arabia. And the change of chip of the professionalization of sport was added the cultural shock. Saudi Arabia is a super complicated country. Then there is Spain, which has a slightly more relaxed atmosphere. Austria was the first full experience I had and now Turkey we are in the middle of the season. Each country brings you something different and one, as a person and an athlete, has to adapt.

– Was it difficult being a volleyball player in a country like Saudi Arabia?

The issue of sexism towards men’s volleyball is held by Peru and no one else. Peru is one of the few countries where women’s volleyball has more interest from the public than men’s. It is a special case. That is why we host many championships, because other countries do not want to do it because they do not fill arenas like we do. In Saudi Arabia the opposite. It is illegal to have a women’s volleyball league there. Women are the ones who have a hard time with restraints. They couldn’t go to the movies or to the stadiums. For us, for example, there was not being able to listen to music in public, respecting the five prayers a day, you couldn’t wear shorts in public. And, obviously, drugs and everything illegal was prohibited. In my contract there was a clause that said that if they found me with drugs I had the death penalty, ha ha ha.

– Why did you choose to play volleyball in Peru, a sexist country towards volleyball, as you pointed out?

It was by chance. I was about meter 92 when I was 15 years old, so my family tried to find me a sport that would take advantage of my size, but I didn’t like it. I did karate, soccer, basketball… and nothing. So, my father knew the coach of the men’s volleyball team, who at that time was the Cuban Antonio Pérez. He told him about me and it was. When I arrived and saw how the senior team trained, I was shocked. How aggressive, fast and explosive he was. That is why I fell in love with the sport.

“Why volleyball and not basketball?” Height is highly valued in both sports

Because I hated that everyone asked me if I played basketball, ha ha ha. I think I disliked him from the start. It was what everyone expected him to do. It has even happened to me now that I am a professional volleyball player. I remember that in Chile, in the South Americans, a lady entered the elevator where we were part of the national team and told us: “Wow! How tall are they, do they play basketball? ” I answer him: “No, we play volleyball.” And their reaction was disappointment, which is what happens in Peru: people are disappointed in that.

—You were bullied at school because of your height. Was volleyball, in the beginning, a refuge or another reason to be harassed?

Measuring meter 92, with 15 years, you can imagine all the things they said to me. But in volleyball I found a place where everyone wanted my size. A reverse world, where I went from hating being tall to being appreciated. On the social issue in Peru, growing up with a sport like volleyball is very complicated. The amount of messages that reach you, even more so in a world globalized by social networks. It is no longer people talking behind your back, now they can send you a message. It is very hard and sometimes I try to expose the situation a bit and how that stops us not only in sports but also as a society. And there people are divided into two: there are those who think you make excuses and those who understand you. Here is a big problem that is the stereotyping of sports, which not only attacks volleyball but everyone.

“Were you discriminated against at the beginning when you started playing volleyball?”

It was difficult for me to grow up with this. At school, when Physical Education was our turn, and they sent the girls to play volleyball, I would ask when it was our turn. And a teacher told me that this was for women and I am telling you with a filter because the word he used is not appropriate. I even stayed with the school because of the way it was expressed. It was horrible. And that is the same case that happens to many teenagers. I even retired because I didn’t like everything that fell for me just because of the sport I did. Of course, I was lucky enough to surround myself with great people, but not all of us grow in that context, so if today I have to raise my voice to create a little awareness, I will. That change is more important to me than a medal. I am aware that as a national team we have a long way to go to be world champions, but if it can be the one that initiates the change in society so that my sport grows, welcome.

—You found a good workhorse on social media to spread men’s volleyball

Yes. But the fact that I am going to play abroad gives me a little more validation, an extra weight to what I say. People are not going to say: “He plays in his neighborhood and comes to give us a talk about something”, but, “He is the captain of the volleyball team, he plays in Turkey, he played in Austria, Spain, Saudi Arabia, he has medals. , etc.”. What I say has a little more weight and that is important to me because I can accompany the social cause with a curriculum. And here comes the social networks, which is a way to present my sport to my own country and to the world. Not everyone knows that there is a men’s volleyball team here, for example. So if you knew what I do because of a joke or a Tik Tok, at least now you know that there is a men’s volleyball team, and it’s perfect.

“Are you happy being a volleyball player in a complicated society?”

I am happy, but not satisfied. Happy because I play the sport that I like, knowing the world, they pay me to do it; but in the end the problems that exist around this limit us a lot. Today I am 27 years old, more than ten involved in this, I have a formed personality, I know who I am. But there are many 15-year-olds, who are just forming their personality and are trying to fit into a world, which can be shocked a lot by criticism and so on. I am in a more mature stage, but I understand the process that others are going through and that is when I enter to be an ambassador for my sport.

—How did the idea of ​​being an ambassador for men’s volleyball come about through your social networks?

Because I understood that if the brands were not going to come from the sports side, because it is difficult for them to sponsor only one person in a collective sport, it had to be attractive on the other hand. Then I went through social networks, to interact with people. In that process I began to associate him with my sport and then my followers began to grow. I remember that in the middle of the pandemic I did a meeting via zoom. I put that the first hundred people who enter, we will talk for a while. Within ten seconds there was a queue of 150 people and one hundred already inside the meeting. It was really mind-blowing. When I started chatting with them I understood that what I had had to have a reason. I went into the meeting to laugh for a while, answer questions, but then life stories appeared that I started to cry.

“What were those cases?”

The first ten minutes were pure laughter, but then boys began to appear telling me their stories, telling me that their parents did not want them to play volleyball, others wanted to enter the national team and did not know how and that their own parents told them that it was a sport for fags, who were not going to get to anything in life. I remember a phrase from a boy who said that he had said to his father: as long as there is an Eduardo Romay, who continues to break schemes and go beyond limits, he too is going to want to do that. That’s when it broke my heart, it changed my life goals a bit, to understand that success is not a medal but what we do with our lives. At that time I spoke with the boy and included him in the basic categories of the selection. Some time later his sister contacted me and spoke to me crying. He told me that his dad had apologized for the way he expressed himself that he had never thought his son would be on a national team. Beyond whether or not the boy grows up sportingly, look at what could be done. The power, in a way, that I handle just by being in the position I’m in is a responsibility to society to do more.

—How have you dealt with social networks, a toxic terrain in many cases?

It’s complicated. There is so much I want to say, the problem of volleyball is not simple, it is a conversation. Every time I want to expose the case a bit on Twitter, for example, there is a character limit and that makes it difficult to put everything in a single tweet. Then people take what they want and disagree. We live in a society where people can hide behind a keyboard and can tell you everything. I have cried many times when reading comments that make me disappear from the networks for days. It is a tough process.

—What’s missing for men’s volleyball to become professional?

I see it far away. The level of men’s volleyball in Peru, at the club level, is not going to be professional for a long time. What’s more, what I said at some point was that the national league would most likely get worse year after year.

-Why?

Because volleyball players are a very small community. It is not like soccer. We cannot have a competitive league with so few players. So what we have to do, and I think it will happen, is that the good players are going to go abroad. Last year we were like seven or eight, this is four of us. The idea is that the good guys take a leap abroad despite the weakening of the domestic tournament. That is what Argentina does in women’s volleyball, for example. They do not have a universe of players, but they are all out there growing internationally. Then the team has a group of 20 or 30 players who are abroad, make a good team and qualify for the Olympic Games, which is everyone’s dream.

– Do you consider yourself an agent of social change?

I would like. Many times the madness of thoughts gives me a little and I wonder what I want to leave in this world, how fleeting I want the presence of Eduardo Romay to be. Nor do I tell you that I am going to be a Mahatma Ghandi, but I do want what I do with my life to have value in a change.

“What is your dream about that?”

Sportingly, as a national team, we are looking for the Olympic Games. But my dream is that one day we can think of men’s volleyball and not associate it with being a “goat, rosquete or fag”, as people mention it. And that we don’t have physical education teachers who always have to separate men’s soccer and women’s volleyball. Silly things like that that create minitraumas and problems in society.