Everything started two years ago (October 2010), I was playing a tennis tournament in Madrid, and that evening I was playing against a thirty year old man who played very aggressively. I lost in three tied sets in around three hours, and when I was leaving the tennis club he told me: “Hey Javi! Have you ever think about playing college tennis in the US?”
I had no idea what college was and what that mean. The Spanish universities are really different, so it would be a huge change for me. I knew that some older tennis friends came to universities in United States, but I did not know what was about, and of course I had never thought about it.
First of all I have to explain that situation. I have been playing tennis during the last 6 years, before that I played soccer and basketball, and I had to decide between one of the three. I had to choose because I had to be focused in school, and playing three sports is not the best way to be focused. It was a hard decision, my favorite sport at that time was soccer, and I was a really good player, but I choose tennis, and I quitted my soccer team and my basketball team . I still don’t really know why I chose tennis, probably because I like to play on my own, but I was young to know exactly why. I started practicing in the best tennis club in Madrid, and competing around Madrid and sometimes around Spain, and after one year I realized that tennis was my favorite sport.
So after that man, also called Javier, told me about the opportunity to come to study and play college tennis in the US, I started thinking about this. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in Spain, which major to choose or which other options I had. I was not really sure about what decision to take, but it was my last year of high school and I had to decide. I asked all the people around me, and everybody told me that I should come and that I was so lucky to have the opportunity to play college tennis and study in the US. It took me a couple of months to decide, because it is not something you can decide instantly. I had to compare the two options and see which one was the best.
The first option was studying in Spain, it was the first option not because it was what I preferred, but because it was the usual for everybody of my age in Spain. I was thinking to study an engineer, probably aeronautical engineer or aerospace engineer. In Madrid we have a solid college of engineer, probably one of the best in Europe, and I would say in the world. I know that because there are a lot of Spanish engineers working around the world, and right now most of the german companies are hiring Spanish engineers. So it was a nice option, staying at home with my family and friends, and studying something that I liked. But there was a huge problem, tennis. If I decide to stay at home studying an engineer there would be no option to continue playing tennis. That is because the engineers in Spain are really hard, and there is no time to do any other thing. There are a lot of classes during the day and you have to study a lot to pass the exams. In conclusion, if I decide to stay in Spain I would have to stop playing tennis, and be focused only in the school.
The second option was coming to the US and playing college tennis. It was a really nice option, I didn’t really know how was college in the US, but I asked some of my friends who were here playing college tennis. They gave me an idea of how was their week