My name is Jesica Umansky. I was born in Capital Federal, Argentina on January 20th 1982. I lived in Capital Federal (the largest city in Argentina) with my family until I turned 17 when I moved to Brazil to play their junior league in Rio de Janeiro for three months. (See "3 months is Brazil" )

That year, 1999, was my senior year of high school at the ILSE (Instituto Libre de Segunda Enseñanza) which is one of the best high schools in the country and therefore my mom wanted me to graduate from there. I had to ask the principal, Lic. Vilma Saldumbide permission to be able to go away for three month and then return to the ILSE to graduate. She kindly supported my decision of making this journey and allowed me to come back at the end of the academic year and take the 13 exams that corresponded to each one of the classes I was missing. And so it happened that the first week of June of 1999, and being only 17 years old, I left Capital Federal, Argentina and flew to Macae, Brazil.

After winning the Juvenile Carioca Championship and finishing fourth with the Infanto-Juvenile team, I returned to Argentina to finish high school. I took 11 exams and passed 10 of them on the first try in December of 1999. I passed the other three exams on my second try in March 2000.

My experience in Brazil made me realize that I could play professional volleyball if I decided to, but I also realized that volleyball was not the only thing I liked to do (even though it was the one I enjoyed the most), and that a good education was important and necessary, especially in the demanding world we live in today.

This realization was the main reason why I decided to go to study to the United States. America was the only place that could give me the opportunity to do the two things I enjoyed doing the most: studying and playing volleyball. Even though I missed my family a lot and there wasn't one day in which I didn't think of them, we decided that the best thing for me was to go to America, and so I did.

I arrived in Fairfax, VA on August 9th of 2001. I devoted the next five years to play Division I volleyball and studying Systems Engineering at George Mason University from where I graduated with honors and a 3.5 GPA on May of 2006.

During my senior year as a volleyball player (2004) something happened to me that had a major influence on my future. Although I had had a great volleyball career at Mason, I had a back injury my junior year that kept me from performing at my best that season and the following one. However, at the beginning of my Senior season we flew to play a tournament at Florida State University (FSU). At that time, one of the FSU coaches was Rita Crockett , an Olympic silver medalist in 1984 with the USA volleyball national team. At the end of the tournament I had the pleasure of being introduced to her and she recommended that I should try to play professional volleyball overseas. Although I was very happy with the big compliment I had just received, I let it pass by at the moment since I still had one more year until I was due to graduate from college. However, I kept those words with me as something to think about in the near future.

Once I was finally done with college I had to make the big decision of whether to start working for a company, keep studying (or both) or give professional volleyball a shot. It was then that I remembered Rita's comment and that helped me make the decision of going pro with volleyball.

While waiting for possibilities to go play overseas, I stayed in America coaching volleyball. One day I got a call from an Argentinian coach, Fabian de Valais, who told me he was being hired by a team in Spain and he would like to know if I was interested in joining his team. After talking for a few months with the people in Spain I decided to take a chance one more time and I accepted their offer.

I returned to Argentina to visit family and friends for about a month before departing once again; destination this time was Europe. And it happened that on September 4th of 2006 I left Capital Federal, Argentina one more time. This time I was 24 years old and going to Lleida, Spain to start my professional volleyball career. (See "Pro Volleyball in Spain")

After a very disappointing first experience as a professional volleyball player, I had the chance to go see the best volleyball league in the world. One of my teammates in Spain, María Cárdenas, gave me the information of an agent company that not only deals with volleyball but also with every kind of high performance athletes. They made me travel to Italy right after I finished playing in Spain and during my stay in Italy I was able to go see some of the best volleyball in the world and also practice with a few very good teams.

About three weeks later it was time to return to Argentina. For the next three months I was waiting to get my Italian citizenship, but then I got tired of waiting and went back to the US for the summer to visit friends and teach volleyball. Another two months and a half went by and it was time for me to get back to Argentina. This time I decided to start looking for a job in my field and while I was job hunting and interviewing, I started to teach English at American corporations. Still the lack of Italian citizenship was making it hard for me to make decisions about my future and in the mean time I had a proposal to play for a club in the Argentinean National League which I took (See "Back to Argentina"). It was a great experience and it allowed me to keep looking for a job in my field while traveling around the country with them.

It only took seven years to get my Italian citizenship but it finally happened. In March of 2008 I got my Italian passport and it opened a door to Europe. By then, however, I already decided to take a job at ExxonMobil where I will get started in the Problem and Change Management department on April 14th. Who knows what will happen next.

More to come, stay tuned!!

Last update: April 3rd, 2008.