In the national final against the Montreal Carabins, the Bisons women's volleyball team engaged in a thrilling battle on home court. But for middle Eve Catojo, the bigger battle took place within her own body and brain. 
 
Against unbelievable odds, Catojo — like she'd done all season — shook off excruciating pain and fought back extreme anxiety. 
 
On March 16 in front of a sold-out crowd with gold on the line, Catojo stepped up to the tune of a game-high seven assisted blocks, helping the Bisons to their first U SPORTS Championship since 2014. She wasn't thinking about how much pain she was in. She wasn't overcome by the moment. 
 
Instead, at Investors Group Athletic Centre on a Sunday night, Catojo faced her fears head-on, and became legendary.
 

"To be honest with you, I was terrified. That's not your ideal Sunday afternoon as a person with anxiety. It made my skin crawl to be honest. I feel like you don't hear that all that often from athletes. A lot of athletes are just fired up. I had to mitigate it," she says openly. 
 
"The whole story of the latter part of the season for me was just being uncomfortable and doing it anyway. That was just another instance of just being uncomfortable and doing it anyway."
 
Those on the outside would have never known Catojo wasn't 100 percent. 
 
She led the country in hitting percentage at .423. She was one of the best blockers all season long (third in Canada West with 66 total). She did all of that and more with the odds stacked against her. 
 
In times of adversity, it takes a village, and Catojo had that in bunches. 
 
She leaned on her family and used their work ethic as a motivator. She leaned on the Bisons support staff, her boyfriend Kai Boyko and her teammates and coaches when she needed advice, and she leaned on her faith in times of particular trial. 
 
Through it all, Catojo didn't give up on herself, she didn't give up on her squad and she faced her fears head on.
 
This is her powerful story.

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The first thing you need to know about Eve Catojo, is that she is brave. The adversity she's overcome from a mental health standpoint speaks volumes about her character, and is truly inspiring.
 
"Growing up, I struggled a lot with anxiousness," she admits.
 
"I would be at school and be like I literally can't be here anymore. I'm freaking out. I'm having a panic attack. I can't deal with the lights and the people. I have to go. You have to remove yourself sometimes. That's what it was like, especially during my elementary school days."
 
Being an "anxious kid" made sport "a lot more difficult" for Catojo, compared to her peers.
 
"A lot of kids around me were like, I'm so excited for this final, or I'm so excited for these people to come watch me, and I'm like, I'm throwing up, and I have cold sweats and chills, and I'm panicking, thinking how am I going to do this? There were a lot of times like that in my developmental career, everything freaked me out," she adds.
 
"It wasn't until I started getting more skilled and getting stronger and more coordinated that the anxiety started to balance out with the excitement. But it was definitely a huge obstacle in that sense."
 
Catojo shot up to 5'10" in grade eight and is now a towering 6'1". For many years she's been a difference-maker at the net, and a dangerous force on the attack, someone the opposition's feared and had to game plan against.
 
Even still, she "hated" going to practice in her early days of club.
 
"I hate to admit that. I thought everyone is so much better than me. I hate my life. I can't do anything. Everyone is always picking on me, because I just sucked. It was painstaking to be there," she recalls.
 
"I just kept thinking, I have to just get to one more practice, and one more practice. It was an uphill battle. I was battling with myself tooth and nail to keep going to practice, and to do what I had to do."
 
Despite the battle being waged in her head, Catojo didn't give up.
 
"It really was just pure stubbornness. And then you stack the days, making yourself do that thing, and making yourself do it again, even though you're like I hate this, this is the worst thing ever. Eventually that all adds up. Eventually you're at practice, and it's like wow, I can hit the ball really hard, wow I can serve a lot better."
 

As Catojo got older, stronger and more confident, her play improved.
 
She committed to the Bisons after high school, but admitted that she still dealt with anxiety at the U SPORTS level. For four years, she's faced that anxiety head on, and thrived.

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It's the day of the national final, and Catojo is nervous. She's thinking about the size of the crowd. She's thinking about all of the things that could go wrong. It makes her feel physically ill.
 
"If I'm being honest with you, sitting in the team room before a game – this is terrible – but all I can think of, is I'm going to miss a serve under the net. I'm going to make ten errors and be the worst middle blocker of all time. It's just this crazy slew of things that will not happen," she says.
 
"I don't think I've made more than two errors all season in a game and most games I don't have any errors. I'm thinking to myself, well, today is going to be the day where I miss every serve I go up for and I'm also going to miss every time I hit. That's horrible self-talk to have, but it's almost like I can't quiet it."
 
Catojo's gone down this rabbit hole before. And when she gets afraid, she leans on her teammates. The bonds she has with them are some of the most important in her life.
 
Sport has provided her with a "built in support system" that she is grateful for every day.
 
"I'm still an extremely anxious and extremely paranoid person, you can ask anyone on my team. Even now, I know I have to go to practice, I have to go to the weight room, I have to travel, even though everything in my body is screaming at me to go into your little shell and stay away from everything," she reflects.
 
"I think that helped me a lot, in ways that I don't appreciate enough. I think my adult life would look drastically different if I didn't have something like sport to push me through those feelings. I feel like sport gave me that outlet. And that comradery too, of being close to people. Growing up I was very isolated. I did not have friends in high school. Being on a team gives you a built in support system."
 
And so, when the feelings of dread entered her mind on the biggest stage, Catojo leaned into the emotions of her teammates.
 
"The biggest way I try to not be so afraid, is to pretend that I wasn't afraid. The rest of my team was so excited for [the national final]. If they're pumped about this, then maybe I shouldn't be so afraid," she exclaims.
 
"Some of the girls on the team were really fired up by that crowd. They were like this is awesome! This is a great day for women in sports. I was trying to feed off of them."
 

It didn't take long for Catojo to make an impact in the national final.
 
She contributed three of her game-high seven assisted blocks in the first set, setting the tone for a Bisons squad that combined for 24 assisted blocks overall in a 3-1 win over Montreal.
 
The more big plays she made, the more passionate she got. Anyone who's seen Manitoba play knows that it's Catojo who sets the tone emotionally. You'd never know that she deals with anxiety. Playing volleyball gives her "a license to be someone that I'm not."
 
"The response that I get from that, from my teammates and also from myself, it's a positive feedback loop. If I make a good play and get fired up and do the big celly, the good plays just start running like tap water after that. People get revved up," she smiles.
 
"Doing something good, and then getting fired up for someone else too, now I just want to keep doing that 1,000 more times. I feel like the man. It almost flips a switch. That's a switch that I cannot flip when I'm sitting by myself in solitude and thinking and doing my mental prep. There's always something I can do to pump up the team, or get people feeling more confident about themselves and help them flip that switch."  
Catojo's middle name is Trinity, and on her shoe at the start of the playoffs, she wrote one of her favourite verses – it's from 2 Corinthians 12:9, and reads "my grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness."
 
There were many times in the second half of the season, specifically, where Catojo felt physical weakness. She'd overcome broken body parts in the past, but the upper body injury she played through in the second term was unlike anything she'd ever experienced before.
 
"Honestly it was right after Christmas break. I just wasn't feeling right. It was nagging. We played Trinity Western after the break. I played the first night and I was feeling crappy. The second night we started warming up and my upper body was killing me. I was doing our warmup and I had tears in my eyes. [Head coach] Ken [Bentley] ended up putting [Aviendah] Plett in that night," she says.
 
"To be in a position for once, where I'm so hurt I literally can't go, I've never been in that position before. I've been hurt, but you just do it. This was the first time where I've been so hurt that I couldn't do it."
 
Catojo was "in really bad shape" from that point onward. It was not a fun time for the veteran middle.
 
She was in so much pain that she "literally could not do anything," including the team's "psycho circuit," which included ten minutes, one on and one off, of rows, clean and jerks, jump squats and speed squats.
That was followed by the same movement for rows and jerks, but wide grip, and then there would be a three-minute speed set, followed by three minutes off.
 
It's a workout that's not for the weak of heart, one of many intense conditioning cycles that helped the Bisons become the fittest team in the country.
 
In the words of co-captain Julia Arnold, they had "fitness to last," in long matches, including a marathon four-set win over UBC in the national semi-finals that went into extra points in the third and fourth sets.
 
But for Catojo, that wasn't her reality.
 
"You want to be doing it, because your team is doing it. You want to be a part of that grind and a part of that story. I was doing what I could, but it's just not the same when it's not with them."
 
Don't get it twisted though, Catojo was still putting in the work in the weight room.
 
The mastermind behind the Bisons' fitness regimen, lead strength and conditioning coach Cole Scheller, modified Catojo's workouts in the gym. In collaboration with Bentley and the rest of the Bisons Integrated Support Team (BIST), Scheller and company assisted in putting Catojo in a position to succeed.
 
A lot of Catojo's time in the high-performance training centre was spent on the bike. She got her heart rate up to a level matching that of her teammates. When they were hurting, she was hurting with them. Just like in the summer when they grinded out reps on the hill, they pushed through, together.
 
"We had to look at the parameters and modify almost completely. That's my job, is to look at it and be like this is what everybody else is doing. This is what you can do to check those boxes and do the things you need to do," says Scheller.
 
"This was hard conditioning. So I looked at it like what else can she do that's hard conditioning, and that does the same thing? We designed and implemented everything in such a way that she could get in there, and still for the most part train the things she needed to do to still be effective at volleyball. She was maintaining her physical parameters and gains that let her do the things that she does."
 
On the court, Catojo would practice "once a week, if that." But when it came time to play, she was ready to go.
 
It was "anxiety-inducing" for her, because she didn't know what she could do, and she wasn't "repping it out," but she trusted in the body of work that had got to her to that point.
 
Aside from the one contest against TWU, Catojo didn't miss a game for the rest of the year, combining for 43 assisted blocks while hitting over 44 percent on six different occasions.
 

There was a great level of communication, and a high level of trust from Catojo, Bentley and the BIST. Their collaboration on a weekly basis helped the North End native maintain a high level of performance throughout the second half of the season.
 
"Cole and [Head Athletic Therapist] Mandy [Los] knew that during the week, I wouldn't ask for too much from her. Eve drove the ship too. She had some license to say how much she wanted to do, and she always wanted to do more. My job was to say, you're good. You've done enough, go get your ice," reflects Bentley.
 
"Eve and Mandy both did the same. It was about managing the pain until you find out what the source of the problem is. We did the best we could to ensure that when she started the weekend, she was in a better place than where she left off the previous weekend. From [Mental Health and Performance Lead] Lindsay [Berard], to [Nutritionist] Janelle [Vincent], to Cole and Mandy and of course our student ATs, everybody played a part in not just Eve's season, but everybody's season."  
Kai was her "rock." As a member of the men's volleyball team, he understood the pressure that comes with being a high-level athlete, and whenever Catojo needed him, he was there.
 
Catojo's mom Bonnie is from small town Grandview, Manitoba. She grinded her way to the top of her craft, earning an NCAA Division 1 scholarship after high school to the University of North Dakota.
 
Her dad Frank – who moved from The Azores [autonomous region of Portugal] when he was young – played football for the Bisons from 1991-94, with his 15 sacks ranking fifth all-time in school history. He was also a First Team All-Canadian and Canada West All-Star in 1994.
 
"For [Frank], sport is how he made it out. He was on scholarship for university. He was the only one out of all his siblings to go to university," beams Eve of her dad, who works as a high school teacher during the day and security for a hospital at night.  
 
"For both of them, I feel like sport was a huge part of perseverance. Frank is really up front in saying you rock and you're great. Sometimes it was tough for me to listen to that. In my head I'm like, you know that game sucked. Something is not right, but he was constant in his support. I felt like I needed both sides, because my mom was a little bit different," she adds.

"She never really let me let go of my humanness. She kept me very grounded, and always kept in the back of my mind that life is bigger than sport.
 
While Catojo was trying to fight through her injury at nationals, her family was also going through their own struggle. Despite inner turmoil, they continued to be her shining light.
 
"The week of nationals when we played Saint Mary's, my grandpa got sick and was air lifted to the hospital in Winnipeg from Grandview. My mom was running around taking care of him. And then we needed to go get my grandma from Grandview which is way up north by Dauphin. They're both living with us, so she's taking care of them," continues Catojo.
 
"Our house is very tiny. There's six adults plus Kai all the time living in our two bedroom bungalow house with one bathroom. Our kitchen and our living room are the same room. She's still making lunches and getting me where I need to be. My dad too, he's taking the bus all the way to Island Lakes for work at 4:30 in the morning. And then he comes home, and he goes to his job over night as a security guard at the hospital. He sees some crazy things there. And then he comes home and he's a dad again.
 
The things they are doing for us, I couldn't imagine having that much on my plate. I think I have it bad sometimes, and then I think about what they have to do. It's just wild to me how much they have supported me. That's something I will never forget."
 

   
Pre-game, and during, the pain for the tenacious middle was obvious.
 
"I was on the bench in the national final. I watched her come off the court, walk to the bench, take a drink of water and start smacking her upper body because it gave her some relief," remembers Scheller.
 
"She was not comfortable during that."
 
But it didn't matter to Catojo, she knew this was "the last one."
 
"I don't need to have anything left in the tank after this. This is what I've been working for. I know what I have to do. I just have to let the pain go," she says.
 
"I went out there, and said the pain doesn't exist right now. We are winning this. I am doing everything I can to help my team win this, I don't care if I'm in pain. I was fired up. I don't care if I have to be stretchered off the court after this by EMS. I just did what I could. The more blocks I got, the more kills we got, I just got more fired up. I don't need to save anything in the tank."
 
Game plan-wise, the goal was to shut down a Carabins attack that thrived on back row attacks.
 
The RSEQ champs had made it to the championship in part because of their back row versatility and zone schemes, but against the Bisons, they ran into a literal brick wall.
 
Catojo was a huge part of that. In three games at nationals, she totalled 19 assisted blocks and six solo blocks, earning a Tournament All-Star nod while helping the Herd win their first U SPORTS Championship in 11 years with a 3-1 victory over the Carabins.
 
"Eve was all over it. She was well prepared," beams Bentley. "I thought she was super patient, and really calm in her reads, and as a result of that, she was touching everything."
 
"For this team, and for this win, and because I've been working so hard for it for so long, and they've been working so hard for it for so long, I just was not prepared to give that up, or ruin or jeopardize that for anyone involved," adds Catojo.
 
"I cared about them so much, and I cared about the goal. It was something where I had to be like okay, this is something that I have to do."
 

Catojo's perseverance inspired everyone around her, from teammates, to support staff to fans.
 
Her journey, according to Scheller, is "a shining example of what you can do, if you face the things that are giving you challenges head on, and seek the support that you need, but also help yourself to get through those problems."
 
"She could have been quiet about her problem. But the whole time, it's been on our radar, it's been a thing we've tried to manage," he adds.
 
"I know I tried the best I could to help get her through that, and she tried the best she could. It ended up working out."