Year in Sports | Revolutionary road: Pu overcomes cultural differences to lead SU volleyball program

Year in Sports: Part 2 of 9

For 32 cents, Jing Pu bought the rest of his life. Thirty cents went toward a plastic disk of English phonetics that played sound units of English words. Two cents went to the card of sound symbols that taught him to pronounce the words he heard on the disk.

In his 20s in China, Pu yearned for a chance to come to the United States.

Day after day for six years, he'd match the two together, his English coming into form at a pace faster than any Chinese student was learning in a college class. Pu said he could look at an English dictionary and know how to say the words right away.

"There's one thing, I spent six years of English self-study, and I was ready in terms of listening, speaking for the English part," Pu said. "Otherwise, it didn't matter how the doors opened up or the opportunities opened up. If you didn't have English, the opportunities in U.S.A. were just not relevant."

That opportunity opened up in the form of an application to the graduate studies program at Utah State University. It was a ticket to part two of his volleyball career — and his life. All he needed to do was fill it out and mail it across the Pacific Ocean to Logan, Utah, and his American career would commence.

Pu's volleyball journey took him from Beijing Sport University to Utah State, and eventually to Syracuse. He's amassed a record of 465-257 during his 21-year head coaching career. It's at SU, though, where he has remained for more than a decade and where he's become known for being the protective coach that has led the Orange to at least 20 wins in eight of those seasons. This year, the SU volleyball team went 23-9, including a program-record 17-0 start.

Before he began his journey, though, he listened to the disk and seriously followed an English teaching program on television that would teach him English grammar. Every day, he'd sit by the radio, listening to "The Voice of America," a program that gave news from the United States. Then, for 30 minutes, he'd listen to "Special English," where the news was slowed down to play at half its speed. Sometimes the program would play American novels. Pu learned about the adventures of an American literature icon named Tom Sawyer.

Pu would use a cassette to record the program, and he began his daily routine. Play, pause, write. Play, pause, write. Every day, every sentence he heard.

"I still remember that I was stuck about an hour not being able to spell the word ‘ceasefire' when I heard it on radio," Pu said. "I don't know where the motivation came from. I had no specific goals. I didn't know what the future was like."

Every Thursday, the Shanghai Foreign Language Institute had an English class for students sponsored by the Chinese government to go to the United States and continue their education. Every week a new American teacher stood in front of the room and spoke about virtually any topic, training students to hear English. Pu would slip into the classroom when he had time off from coaching. He watched nearly every student struggle to understand what they were hearing. Pu knew every word. Every sentence.

He was ready to go.

***

Pu's own revolution began as a result of a revolution that swept through China.

From 1966 to 1976, China underwent a cultural revolution. The country started to move away from a style of communist ideology and also struggled against its own cultural traditions. Schools and sports programs shut down, and millions of Chinese citizens were sent to agricultural fields and factories to be re-educated.

Pu spent two of his teenage years working in a factory making machinery parts. In the early 1970s, schools and universities started to reopen, but with different admission requirements as part of the Cultural Revolution.

Only workers, farmers or soldiers were eligible to be considered for college admission. Pu's two years in the factory meant he qualified. Based off his test performance, interviews and the recommendations of people in his work unit, the recruiting team from Beijing offered him admission for the Beijing Institute of Physical Education, now Beijing Sport University.

"You don't have a choice. They are recruiting, and you have the opportunity to try," Pu said. "There really was not a lot of existing opportunity for you to pick. If something happens, something happened. I passed the exam, and they were happy about the results."

The college physical education curriculum in the part of China where Pu lived requires students to pass all-around physical tests, such as endurance, speed, agility, multiple skill tests and technical evaluations. Pu studied to become a physical education teacher, but volleyball was where he excelled most.

After he graduated, Pu was sent to play volleyball for the Qinghai province. His playing days ended within a couple of years, and he began the transition to coaching after the China Third National Games. Once again, the government stepped in. Pu was sent to the Chinese National Volleyball Coaches Program, where coaches were systematically trained in every part of the job.

"That one month kind of prepared you in coaching, especially the shift of mindset from how I play to how to train and develop the skills of other people," Pu said. "Learning how to think, plan and organize as a coach from different angles to look at the sport."

Pu spent four years coaching the professional women's team in the Qinghai Province. It was during that time that his personal door to the United States opened up. One of his relatives was a leading Chinese scientist and left the country in the early 1980s to join research work in Utah State's physics program. Soon after, Pu received an application for admissions at Utah State.

A few months later, Pu departed for his new life in the United States. Though he knew the language, American collegiate sports was still a foreign subject. He arrived in Utah, and after a meeting with the school's head coach, Pu was offered the job of graduate assistant. After spending nearly a decade playing and coaching in China, Pu was taken aback by one thing: Volleyball was only a part of students' lives. Not their entire lives.