While there is no question that the life of a student-athlete is a busy one, a sport that is a little different is tennis. Most sports have a designated season, but Trinity Women’s Tennis competes in both the fall and spring, which means that when these Tigers are on campus, they are always working hard – both on and off the court. To learn more about what life is like as a tennis player on campus, I sat down with Constanza Gomez, a sophomore on the Trinity Women’s Tennis team.

From the very beginning of our conversation, it was evident that Gomez’s culture is important to her. Coming to Trinity all the way from Costa Rica, Gomez is one of four international women’s tennis players in the entire Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC), the only one for the Tigers.

“In Costa Rica, we don’t have college tennis like the NCAA here. So ever since I was little, [playing in the US] is what I wanted to do. It was my dream […] I’m finally here and I love it,” Gomez said.

Training nearly every day of the week this semester, Gomez continues to make her time in San Antonio count. To put things into perspective, she walked me through her typical Monday on campus.

Staying consistent with her motto of ‘starting the week off strong,’ Gomez takes advantage of all the resources Trinity has to offer; Through her own initiative of reaching out to strength and conditioning coach Daniel Martinez, she begins her Monday with a workout in the Sports Performance Center (SPC) at 8:30 a.m. sharp.

After her one-on-one lifting session, Gomez quickly cleans up in the locker room before going to her job as an Office Assistant in the Center for Science and Innovation (CSI) building. From 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., she performs various tasks for the university and its professors, such as sorting materials and providing photocopies for coursework. From there, she heads to lunch and then to class thereafter.

Once her classes end at 3:45 p.m., Gomez makes her way back to the Sports Performance Center for another lift at 4:15 p.m., this time with the entire team. After the group finishes their workout in the SPC, they hit the courts at 5:15 p.m. for a two-hour practice.

“Practices are always fun and competitive. Whether we are doing single matches or doubles, we put in a lot of work as a team every practice,” Gomez said.

But what happens in the event of a student athlete’s worst nightmare: when academics conflict with team practice? Unfortunately, Gomez runs into this problem herself this semester, with a 6 p.m. class on Tuesdays.

“On days when I can’t make it to team practice, like on Tuesday, I do what we call ‘one-on-ones.’ This is when we go [to the courts] and have an individual [session] with our coaches. So on Tuesday, I practice at 4:00 p.m., an hour earlier than our usual time, and then I go to my class after the session,” Gomez said.

By ‘go’ to class, Gomez actually attends this class virtually from the Mabry Tennis Pavillion. After her one-on-one at 4:00 p.m., she joins the team practice at 5:15 p.m. for as long as she can before heading to Mabry for her virtual class session. Given that this is an in-person class, Gomez applauded Trinity and its professors for supporting the demands of being a student-athlete, specifically entrepreneurship professor Jacob Gray.

While she typically does her one-on-ones every Tuesday and Wednesday, Gomez mentioned that this type of personal attention is something that the coaching staff offers to all of its players throughout the week.

“It helps me a lot when I have to work on something more specific. When we are doing team practice, the pace is faster. But when we go to a one-on-one, it really gives us a full hour to work on whatever we want to focus on, like volleys and serves for example,” Gomez said.

Evidently, while a usual sports team at Trinity develops a routine through training as a group, our women’s tennis players find time for individual training as well as group training. While showing up to the field or court without teammates may seem unappealing to many athletes, Trinity women’s tennis embraces this element of training on a consistent basis, with many of its players scheduling at least one individual practice a week.

After practice, Gomez heads to dinner and finishes her night with some studying. As a member of the SCAC 2021 Academic Honor Roll, she knows what it takes to get the job done both on and off the court. Whether it’s taking a test a day earlier than everyone else or studying a little harder throughout the day, Gomez continues to impressively represent her country as a student-athlete for the Tigers.

When looking toward the remainder of the season, Gomez is excited about finishing strong in the SCAC, with the ultimate goal of making a run in regionals.

“Regionals is the first step to nationals. If we win regionals, we go to nationals […] Having already played teams like Pomona-Pitzer and Claremont definitely helps us because we [now] know what to expect […] We played them when we went to California and now we know their game,” Gomez said.

With a set of away matches against Austin College and UT-Dallas this weekend, Trinity Women’s Tennis looks to secure two more conference wins in preparation for the SCAC Championships at the end of April. With outstanding student-athletes like Constanza Gomez on their side, our Tigers certainly have what it takes to win big-time games while performing exceptionally well in the classroom – leading by example of what it means to be a student-athlete here at Trinity.