‘Survivor’ contestant and Tech grad talks autism, playing on men’s hockey team

“We did classic drinking games like beer pong but with idols and a tribal council,” she said. “So I decided to watch the real thing.”

Credit: CBS

Credit: CBS

Quickly hooked, Eva decided to try out and landed on the 48th cast as the youngest player. Her tribe, Lagi, is one of three this season and showed its immediate dominance by winning both a reward challenge for supplies and the immunity challenge in the opening episode.

Eva quickly came across on the show as a vibrant player.

Dalton Ross, the Entertainment Weekly “Survivor” guru who has been writing recaps of the show for more than 15 years, wrote: “Eva’s energy is absolutely infectious, and for someone who talks about missing out on obvious social cues due to her autism, her self-awareness is off the charts.”

Indeed, Eva said she worried her autism would make it harder for her to discern when someone was lying. (Then again, people lie all the time on “Survivor,” and no shortage of players not on the autism spectrum get fooled.)

She knew going in that “you have to be a very multifaceted player. You have to be smart and strategic and strong.” Just being a physical threat, she noted, no longer seems to matter as much in latter seasons of the 25-year-old show.

She was clearly a strong physical player from the get-go, actively picking up large bundles of bamboo to build shelter, a repetitive activity that provided her structure as she acclimated to her new surroundings in Fiji.

Star Toomey, a fellow cast member from Augusta, watched her work ethic with admiration. “She’s, like, literally a beast,” she said on the show.

Credit: CBS

Credit: CBS

Eva’s autism is not readily apparent to other players in the first episode. And she told the AJC she planned to tell a limited number of people because she didn’t want her castmates to see her as weak or reliant on a “sob story.”

She also said she needed a trusted ally who could stay with her to the end if she made it that far. On her tribe, she quickly bonded with firefighter Joe Hunter, 45.

“He showed emotional intelligence and a love for his family the way he talked about them,” Eva said. “He is so accomplished as a fire captain and working on a national search and rescue unit. Yup, this is the kind of man I can work with.”

She told Joe about being diagnosed with autism early in her life, warning him that she sometimes gets overstimulated, which causes her to shut down. She gave him the warning signs and asked him to help her out if she got overly stressed moving forward. She also asked him to keep it a secret. He agreed.

Credit: CBS

Credit: CBS

Eva grew up in Minnesota where hockey is king.

“Hockey was very therapeutic for me,” she said. “Unlike soccer, the hockey gear compresses my body and comforted and grounded me. The practices were very predictable. And I got to socialize with other kids. Hockey became my great passion.”

At Tech, she said there was no women’s hockey team so she tried out and made the men’s team. “I was already a very physical player compared to most women so I quickly got used to the more aggressive way men play,” she said.

As a result, she said she was not intimidated by some of the muscular men on the “Survivor” cast this season.

Ron Clark, a season 38 contestant on “Survivor” who runs the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, told the AJC he was impressed by Eva based on the first episode.

“She was very smart to be vulnerable and share her story with Joe,” Clark said. “It resonated with him and she has now positioned herself as a ‘daughter figure’ in his eyes. Very clever move, whether it was calculated or genuine.”

Davie Rickenbacker, an Atlantan who was on season 37 of “Survivor,” said Eva could go far and was smart aligning with a man. “All girls alliances never work on the show,” he noted.

IF YOU WATCH

“Survivor”

8 p.m. Wednesdays on CBS, available on Paramount+ the next day