Kent State grad booted off ‘Survivor’

By RiCH Heldenfels

Akron Beacon Journal

AKRON

Asked what she might change if she plays on “Survivor” again, Kent State graduate Jill Behm had a simple answer.

‘’Everything,’’ she said. “You need a whole lot of luck or a perfect game to win “Survivor,” and I had neither.’’

Behm was eliminated from the reality competition’s current season on Wednesday’s show. The former Jill Halmi, an emergency-room physician in Erie, Pa., started the season as part of the Espada tribe, over-40-year-old competitors pitted against a La Flor tribe of under-30s. But the two tribes were later realigned, with Behm ending up on La Flor, where the younger players outnumbered the older ones — and the younger players formed an unbreakable alliance.

Behm had a good alliance with another over-40, Marty Piombo, and even shared the key to finding a hidden immunity idol with him before the tribes realigned. But she kept finding herself at tribal council because, she said, she ended up with tribes that were bad collectively. And it turned out she could not even count on the other older player, Jill Bright, in the retooled La Flor.

“The mistake I made — kind of the largest mistake, but not the only one — was solving the idol clue and giving it to Marty. That obviously cost me,’’ she said in a telephone interview Thursday.

Asked about that decision, she said, “Everybody was looking for the idol. Everybody was going to know if you had it, eventually. ... I was totally loyal with Marty. I knew he would use it for the good of us . . . so I figured by giving it to him, it puts the target off my back but I still have access to it. Had we not had the tribe switch, we were golden.’’

The tribe switch played into another Behm miscalculation.

“The next mistake I made was probably not getting enough of a bond with my original Espada members in case there would be a tribe switch, which there was,’’ she said. ‘’So Jane was against Marty and I. Then as far as luck goes, I honestly couldn’t have had worse luck. When the tribes switched, there were three of us and five of them . . . and then when I went over, anybody [from the original Espada] but Jane would have worked.’’

Bright claimed on the show that Behm and Piombo had snubbed her.

“I was just shocked by that,’’ Behm said. “She had some minor medical stuff occur, and I sort of helped her a little bit . . . so for her to say that is just unbelievable.’’

Bright has also been hiding food from her tribe-mates, which Behm called “reprehensible.’’

“I think she’s just totally vindictive and hypocritical at this point,’’ Behm said. ‘’I want to see how that pans out for her.’’ Behm wants to try Survivor again.

“I made mistakes, and the competitor, the athlete in me, wants to go back and fix those,’’ she said. “I’d do it in a heartbeat. . . . My physical game I wouldn’t change at all,’’ she said. ‘’I’m going to be good at challenges and there’s no way to hide that. I think if I had been on any other season but this old/young, I would have been great. I would have been able to bond with a variety of people.”