Story by Ben Scheer
At the end of every season, New Mexico State University head tennis coach, Don Ball, faces a bittersweet circumstance: saying goodbye.
This year was no different.
There are four players who recently finished their college tennis careers for coach Ball and NMSU. Four individuals who came to Las Cruces as strangers became part of the tennis team and their coach’s tutelage and are now sailing off with shared experiences and a shared conundrum—what’s next?
The tennis complex sits empty on the NMSU campus. (Photo by Ben Scheer)
A melting pot of players
Those four players are Aleksa Costa and Sophia Marks, on the women’s side, and Gustav Diep and Eduardo Salas.
“About 80 to 90 percent of our players are international students,” Ball said.
In fact, there are seven different nationalities represented by the nine-member team, one of whom is from the U.S. The men’s team is less poly-national; its 12-member squad represents five different countries.
“I can’t believe how much I learn from them,” Ball said. “Before I started coaching, I thought everything the U.S. did was perfect. And they’re like ‘no, coach.’ They’ve really opened my eyes.”
These are true student athletes
It’s not a wonder how a group of people of this caliber could be so enlightening. Seemingly too often, student athletes’ fields of study are not the most stringent nor demanding. That is not the case for the majority of the tennis team.
“The international kids earn it,” the coach explained. “When we’re on the road and some of the team wants to go out and go shopping or something like that, they’re like ‘no coach, we have to study.’”
The courts are a bit more empty following the departure of four of the tennis team's leaders. (Photo by Ben Scheer)
Along with shared study habits, a long road trip to get to their respective homes, all four of share the problem of what to do and where to go after graduation. That’s a problem similar to the majority of college grads, but these kids have an extra layer to the issue, because they are all on student visas, ready to expire, they all have to findjobs or find a way home.
Where to go from here
Yeah, I don’t know what I’ll do after I graduate. I want to find a job here in the states, but it’s really hard right now,” Marks said.
When asked if she will have to go back home, Marks said “yeah, I’ll most likely go back to Nottingham – right, the home of Robin Hood, everyone here says that,” she answered with nervous laughter.
Ball said Marks was the best player on the women’s team for three consecutive years. The team, however, finished the 2010 season with an 11-13 over record, 4-4 in the Western Athletic Conference.
