International Volleyball Hall induction celebration: Brazilian Ana Paula Henkel

This is one in a series previewing the inductees going into the International Volleyball Hall of Fame in Holyoke, Massachusetts, on Saturday. 
This year there are nine inductees, two indoor players in Italian Andrea Zorzi and Cuba’s Regla Bell; two beach players in American Tim Hovland and Brazilian Ana Paula Henkel; Brazilian coach Jose “Ze” Roberto and ParaVolley coach Hadi Rezaei of Iran; two officials in Argentinian Juan Angel Pereyra and American Sue Lemaire; and Italian Giuseppe Panini, who is going in as a leader.
There are also three special honoree categories recognized this year: John Kessel is receiving the Mintonette Medallion of Merit Award; Bill Kauffman and Ed Chan are being honored posthumously with the inaugural Award for Media Excellence; and Michael Kane, Mike Knapik, Aaron Vega and Don Humason are receiving the Mayoral Award of Excellence.

In this era of specialization, it is profoundly hard to fathom just how great an accomplishment it is to have made it to the pinnacle of both the beach and indoor disciplines of our sport. Harder still, even to imagine an athlete doing it in Brazil, where their women’s Olympic teams since 1996 (when beach was introduced as an Olympic sport), have won more total medals combined in the two disciplines than any other country (13, the USA has won 12).

And then there is Ana Paula Henkel. She made TWO Olympic teams in EACH sport representing her native country. She not only straddled those two disciplines effectively, but also made the transition on the beach from side out/large court, to rally scoring/small court in a meritorious career that spanned 19 total years of world-class volleyball. And there’s more, much more. She can throw a wicked roundhouse punch AND she is one of the foremost political commentators in Brazil.

We will get to all of that.

Is it any wonder then that Ana Paula was the top fan vote getter by far of any member of the 2024 induction class to the International Volleyball Hall of Fame? While Henkel is being inducted as a beach player, like fellow ’24 IVHF class member, Tim Hovland, she cut quite a swath in the indoor game, as well.

“I started to shake like I was 15 years old,” Henkel said, when George Mulry, executive director of the International Volleyball Hall of Fame, informed her of the IVHF’s Board of Directors’ decision. “My legs were shaking.

“My face was burning. I could not control myself. A lot of faces came to my mind about people who helped me get to this point. My father, he is not with us (anymore), and he was always my No. 1 fan and my mentor. He believed in me more than my own dreams. He said every day ‘You are going to do it!’ ”

A 6-foot middle blocker, Henkel made her first Olympic team in 1992, at just 20, and helped the Canarinhas finish fourth, to that point the highest placing ever for a Brazil women’s team in the quadrennial spectacle. Four years later, she was a bona fide star on the team that won a bronze medal, Brazil’s first ever at a women’s indoor Olympics. The semifinal match, with a spot in the championship on the line, proved to be especially exciting and contentious. 

“Everything was fine with them (Cuba) until we started to beat them,” Ana Paula recalled. “We were the No. 1 and 2 teams in the world at the time of the ’96 Olympics. But even before then, they started to yell things across the net at us (to try and intimidate us).” 

Brazil and Cuba were seeded to meet each other in the gold medal match. But Cuba lost twice in pool play, once to Brazil, and then unexpectedly again to Russia. 

So, the two volleyball powerhouses met in the semifinals instead. Cuba won the last two games, and the match, 15-13, 15-12. And then it got REALLY interesting. A spew of vitriol was followed by a physical confrontation outside the adjacent two locker rooms.

Mayhem ensued.

“Yes, I landed a few punches,” Ana Paula laughed when she recalled the chaotic scene that was finally broken up by U.S. Marshals who were stationed with the Cuban team.

An impressed Holly McPeak, a beach Olympian that year, was one who took note.

“Ana Paula proved she was a fighter when they played Cuba,” McPeak said. “When she came out on the beach, she had a big impact with her solid all-around game and size at the net! Ana Paula could do it all!”  

Before she headed to the sand though, Ana Paula was not done with indoor. She was voted the MVP of the 1994 World Cup before Atlanta, and was an integral part of three Brazilian FIVB Volleyball World Grand Prix (the precursor to what is now the VNL) indoor title teams in 1994, 1996 and 1998. Henkel was awarded best blocker in ’96, and then two years later was tabbed as the top spiker and blocker. 

And yet after all that success, at the age of 27, Henkel made her major pivot to the sand in 1999.

“My game was plateauing,” Ana Paula said. “The physical cost was too high. Stress fractures everywhere, knees, shins and feet. My spine and discs were out of place. In 1998 I needed a knee surgery after the World Championships. The doctor suggested doing rehab on the beach. I had never played on the sand before that.”

At the time, the reigning Olympic champion Jackie Silva needed a practice partner. And Ana Paula was more than happy to oblige.

“Doing heavy training on the beach, I felt like my body was 10 years younger,” Henkel said. “I felt like I was 20 again because I was playing on the sand.”

Silva was duly impressed with the newbie, and how fast she picked up the intricacies of the beach game. It led them to play some tournaments together under the watchful eye of Marcos Miranda, the supervisor of the Brazilian indoor national team who also served as the country’s beach coach as well. Miranda was convinced Ana Paula had all the skills to play beach. He also taught her something that became her most lethal weapon.

“I came from absolutely nobody as a jump server indoors. I served under the net half the time!” she said with a laugh. “I became the best server on the beach because of the people that trained me (including Miranda).” 

Ana Paula had no trouble finding world-class partners. After Silva, in 2000 she hooked up with Atlanta silver medalist Monica Rodrigues, and in just her second full year on the FIVB World Tour, Ana Paula netted her first win with Rodrigues in Cagliari, Italy.

Three years later, in ’03, Henkel teamed with Silva’s Atlanta gold medal teammate Sandra Pires, and they barnstormed the world, appearing in eight finals out of ten tournaments, winning four of them, and capturing the coveted honor of FIVB Tour Champions. Ana Paula also won the first of her five consecutive awards as the Best Server on the Tour.

That 2003 campaign seemed like a perfect setup to a glorious run at an Olympic medal in Athens. But it was not to be. The bugaboo of all great athletes, injuries, compromised Ana Paula and Sandra’s run to a medal.  A surprising pool play loss to Germany, was followed by a loss in the quarterfinals to their Brazilian compatriots, Shelda Bede and Adriana Behar, 15-13 in the third.

“(Leading up to the Games) Sandra had a calf injury and could not jump properly. I had a stress fracture in my right wrist so I could not turn my wrist to jump serve or handset. But because we were trying to qualify for Athens (2004 Olympic Summer Games), we did not stop, and it got worse and worse.”

Bloodied, but unbowed, Ana Paula continued forward. Her great gift was adaptability. In Henkel’s 11-year pro beach international career she won with five different partners, most ever among female OR male players. In addition to Rodrigues and Pires, Henkel also won with Leila Barros, and both of the Bedes, Shelda and Shaylyn.

And it was that versatility that played a role in Ana Paula’s stunning return to the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. The dominant Brazilian team at the time was Juliana Felisberta Silva and Larissa Maestrini. They had locked up the first of the two spots on offer well ahead of time and were formidable challengers on paper to Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty May-Treanor the defending Olympic gold medalists. Meanwhile, Renata Ribeiro and Talita Antunes locked up the number two Brazilian berth. That selection was made before Ana Paula and Shelda won the final two pre-Olympic tournaments, in Gstaad and Klagenfurt, two of the most prestigious stops on tour. Nevertheless, they were on the outside looking in.

Except, maybe not. A wild turn of events ensued. Juliana, the blocker, injured her anterior cruciate ligament in a tournament in June in Paris, two months before the Games, but continued to play in pre-Olympic tournaments.

“Juliana had received a knee brace from Germany and was all set to play in the Olympics,” Ana Paula recalled. “Meanwhile, I had been partying since I had gotten back to Brazil from Klagenfurt.”

It was three days until the start of the Olympics.

“At 6 a.m. my sister was shaking me and yelling ‘Get up, get up. There is a federation person at the door saying you have to go to China!’ ” 

It turned out that Juliana in actuality was too banged up to play, and all of a sudden Brazil’s No. 1 team was short a blocker.

“I arrived in China and went straight to the technical meeting at 2:30 pm the day before competition was to start,” Ana Paula said. “I had never practiced with Larissa, never even exchanged a word with her, and now we were teammates and roommates.” 

Considering all of the drama leading up to first serve, Henkel and Larissa acquitted themselves quite admirably, finishing fifth in Beijing.

“After the Olympics, Larissa sent me a beautiful heartfelt letter that I have kept ever since,” Henkel said.

Ana Paula continued to play for a couple more seasons on the FIVB World Tour in addition to branching out and playing on the AVP in America.

And shortly thereafter, the third act of the Ana Paula Henkel story began.

“My father was a principal at an American school in Brazil, and was known as a true problem solver,” Henkel said. “There was a teacher’s strike, and he said to himself out loud: ‘What would Reagan do?’ ”

That started Ana Paula on a path that ultimately led to a new flourishing career.

“I wondered, who was this guy my father was calling out to for guidance,” Henkel said. “Who is ‘this Reagan’ and my dad started telling me who ‘this Reagan’ was.”

“I started to voice my opinion more about Brazil when I moved to the United States,” Henkel continued. “I fell in love with American history. And I wanted to apply some of those teachings and learnings to Brazil.”

Ana Paula first started to write opinion pieces on Facebook. It did not take long for Brazilian mainstream media to take notice. Estadão, the third largest newspaper in Brazil, gave her the platform, and that was just the beginning.

Today she is a commentator/writer for the multimedia site “Revista Oeste.” It is a website with 24/7 news, and Ana Paula also has a YouTube show airing five days a week for two hours at a clip, that reaches more than half a million viewers daily. And in her spare time, what little there is, she is writing a book about…Ronald Reagan of course!

She does all of this work from the South Bay, California, home that she shares with husband Carl Henkel. If that name appears familiar, it should. Carl made the USA Beach Olympic team with partner Sinjin Smith in 1996, and their quarterfinal match against fellow Americans, Karch Kiraly and Kent Steffes, is one of, if not the, greatest beach volleyball match in USA history. 

Almost as amazing, in the final pre-Olympic tournament in Ostende, Belgium, four years later in 2000, Henkel playing with Smith again, finished in second, ahead of all three teams that would ultimately sweep the medals a little over a month later in Sydney at the summer Games. The legal profession’s gain, though, was beach volleyball’s loss as Carl transitioned to a career in the law full-time in 2003.

Both Ana Paula and Carl have children from prior marriages and Carl’s daughter, Victoria, is a 5-11 freshman on the LSU beach volleyball team. 

Ana Paula expresses gratitude for all parts of her life, both on the court and off, and does not let any of the accolades, praise or accomplishments get to her head.

“For anything in life, when you win, win, win it can be addictive,” Henkel cautions. “But it can also hide a lot of traps that you don’t see.”

Seems like Ana Paula has done a remarkable job looking around those corners her entire life.

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