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A World of Gratitude: Marina Ziehe ’14

by Jay Salter '19 | External Communications Coordinator - January 15, 2025

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NEWBERRY — Newberry College is home to students from 37 states and 35 countries across six continents. This community has a global impact, despite, and even because of, its rurality. One story of Newberry’s impression on the world stage is that of Newberry College graduate Marina Ziehe '14. The native Brazilian trained and studied for years to earn a tennis scholarship to attend college in the United States. A decade later, she’s back in Brazil, producing videos for her homeland’s Olympic committee.

 

At age eight, Marina leapt headfirst into gymnastics. She dreamed of one day taking her talents to the world stage, representing her native Brazil in the Olympic Games. She was off to a great start, until four years later, when her coach, the only one in her hometown of Macaé, retired. “It broke my heart,” she says. Over the next two years, she discovered tennis, and it was love at first serve. 

 

For Marina, tennis wasn’t just a hobby. Through the possibility of scholarships, tennis was her ticket to the United States, where she could receive a high-quality education in the land of opportunity. At age 15, she left Macaé, on Brazil’s east coast, to live with her grandmother in Petrópolis, three hours away. She believed the Imperial City offered greater chances to hone her skills. 

 

“My family couldn't afford my coming here. It's just too expensive to go to school here. I would have to get a scholarship,” she says. “I spent two years preparing myself to come here. It was such a rough path to be a 15-year-old going away from home and practicing tennis eight hours a day to get a scholarship. Everybody in town was like, ‘what are you doing? You don’t even know if you’re gonna get it.’”

 

Outside of completing her high school requirements via distance learning, she practiced tennis and studied English.

 

“My coach back home said that I would be prepared for a college scholarship. There was this agency that helps athletes get scholarships. I would just have to send a video of myself playing, hitting forehands, hitting backhands, playing points, and then take the tests. They would compile all this and send it to schools in the U.S.

 

“I got some offers from other colleges, but Newberry offered me a really good scholarship. Almost a full ride. I looked at the Newberry website and social media at the time, and I liked it. Newberry just sounded like a cool place,” she says.

 

Marina arrived at Newberry in January 2011, and shortly after witnessed something she had never seen in-person, and which South Carolinians rarely see: snow. “When I got here, it was snowing. There were inches of snow on the tennis court. When I got here, the town was silent. There was nobody on the streets. I come from a tropical place where people are always on the streets, so it was weird. But we had a snowball fight and really played in it.”

 

She was also introduced to Southern smoked, mustard-based barbecue — not quite the grilled, skewered style of Brazilian churrasco fame, but still enjoyable.

 

For her areas of study, Marina had long decided on communications and graphic design. As long as she could remember, she had a penchant for storytelling. She especially enjoyed stories that highlighted people and parts you don’t often see. “I was very interested in daily stories, of everyday life, hidden in plain sight. Not-so-common stories. Stories off the beaten path,” she says.

 

Marina committed intensely to her studies and her sport. In the 2012 season, she was named to the South Atlantic Conference Honor Roll, designated a Intercollegiate Tennis Association Scholar-Athlete, and enjoyed success on the court, particularly in doubles play. In the Newberry record book, she stands tied at No. 9 for doubles win percentages in a season, taking 77% of matches in her senior season. She ranks third in career fourth singles wins with 18, and sixth for career second doubles wins with 25.

 

In 2014, during her last semester at Newberry, she started an internship with South Carolina ETV. The role would later turn full-time as she completed her master’s in organizational leadership. Her work at ETV revolved around the Carolina Money initiative — sharing stories of the Midlands business community — and ETV’s partnership with the South Carolina Telehealth Alliance.

 

“For this telehealth program, we would go out — usually just me with my camera equipment — to where a patient had a great experience with telehealth. I'll tell the story of the patients, instead of just what telehealth is. Telehealth can be a hard subject to talk about. It can be very technical. So, my job was to chase the human aspect of the story.”

 

After stints with South Florida PBS and Quora in Portuguese, Marina created her own video series called “Let Me Tell You a Story.” She went through her community in Brazil and made short-form videos of stories she found interesting and insightful. “The guy who sells flowers in a flower shop. The lady who works at the bakery. I would find interesting people in our daily lives, who sometimes you don’t give much attention to. I even told the story of a caretaker for a graveyard and how he deals with death.”

 

Eventually, one of her videos caught the eye of the Brazilian Olympic Committee. “They saw one of my stories, actually one about a disabled man who played tennis in a wheelchair. They were like, ‘we love your work and we need someone like you doing what you do for sports.’”

 

She started working with the committee in 2021 and came aboard full-time in 2022. “It doesn't stop. There's not a day that we go to the office and there's nothing to do. There are always things to do. We're not waiting around for work every two years.”

 

Her work has taken her all over the world, covering various sports and games, including the 2024 Winter Youth Olympics in Gangwon, South Korea, the Pan-American Games in Chile, and of course, the summer games in Paris this past summer. She went to Paris 20 days before the start of the games to cover the preparations, and as fate would have it, she traveled with the Brazilian gymnastics team.

 

Her specialty has been the unseen behind-the-scenes work done by countless individuals that makes the games possible. “We have this gala event at the end of every year where we give out awards to athletes and coaches who had great performances. I was interested in the people who were creating the trophies and how they are made. There’s a whole process to it. I went to their studios and I filmed them, and they were so thankful for it, because nobody ever told their stories before.”

 

One of her favorite projects has been her video on the 27-year-old Brazilian architect who won the medal design competition for the youth winter games in Gangwon. “All the medalists got something from Brazil, and I told the story of how he created the medal. As it turned out, Brazil won our first-ever medal at a Winter Youth Olympic Games, and I got to see the encounter between our first Brazilian winter games medalist and the Brazilian who designed the medals. It was a mix of arts and sports.”

 

In the fall of 2024, Marina returned to Newberry for the first time since graduation to thank her professors and others who made her success possible. “When I got here, it made me value what I had here, because I had to work really hard for it. It was not easy, no. That’s this idea of taking advantage of the opportunities you have. Even coming to South Carolina was like a calling, and I felt I had to come back and walk through the streets and talk to the people who helped me get to where I am today.

 

“I am very grateful for the opportunities I’ve had in my life to do something I’m passionate about, that has purpose and is of service to others. I’m grateful to these people, to this place.”

 

This article appeared in print in Newberry, the lifestyle magazine of Newberry County, and in Newberry College's 2024 Annual Report. Header image taken by Kornelia Rudkowska.



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