I resume the blog’s section “Talking to my tour colleagues” [which I launched with this one] giving the floor to Silvia Costache, whom I made friends with in the summer of 2022, when we trained together with our physical coach, Mihai Anghel and we shared the room at the ITF W60 tournament in Brașov.

The blogger with Silvia Costache, on and off the court

Silvia left at the end of that summer to study and play at a college in the US, but in the summer holidays of 2023 and 2024 she came back to play the ITF W15 Bucharest tournament. On these occasions we chatted again live. She told me many things from there that may interest you too. So, the other day I asked her to share with the “Court Chronicles” readers some details about the college life in the USA.

First, I asked Silvia how she went to study in the USA, more precisely, what determined her to direct her career in this direction and how she materialized this approach, once the decision was made.

And her story began like this:

The story of my decision to study and play tennis at a college in the US is quite funny. If someone had asked me in the 10th grade – I graduated from “Ștefan Odobleja” Theoretical High School – if I was going to go study in the States with a tennis scholarship, my answer would have been a categorical “no”, because of the negative rumours circulating among Romanian athletes and their parents regarding this option.

Here, allow me to interrupt a bit Silvia‘s narrative, in order to contradict, in my turn, this negative perception that exists in our country related to tennis scholarships at US colleges. As I also wrote in one of the articles, this is no longer justified, because the years spent there no longer represent a “burial” of the professional career but, on the contrary, a launch pad into professional tennis.

According to the ITA (Intercollegiate Tennis Association) website – “We are Tennis College”, last year, 20 players – 5 women and 15 men – with college ties were ranked in the top 100 WTA, respectively ATP in singles, and 15 female players and 39 male players were present in the top 100 in doubles.

Among others, we can list Emma Navarro (8 WTA ranking today), Danielle Collins (11), Diana Shnaider (13), Peyton Stearns (46), Mayar Sherif (65) or Ben Shelton (20 ATP) , Cameron Norrie (52), Francisco Cerúndolo (31), Brandon Nakashima (35), Christopher Eubanks (102).

And let’s not forget Gabriela Talabă Lee, whom I also wrote about.

But let’s give Silvia Costache the floor again:

In 11th grade when I had the UTR ranking [a global system that rates all tennis players on a unique 16-point scale based on match results; uses an algorithm that takes into account the rating of matches and their difficulty; more, in my article] around 10, I started getting a lot of messages on Instagram and Facebook from coaches from American universities, which I ignored at first. However, one day I thought to analyse what they were proposing and the fact that they offered full scholarships seemed attractive to me.

Such a full scholarship includes: practice, physical training, recovery, education, food and accommodation. So, I decided to answer the messages and schedule the video calls that the coaches suggested in the messages.

After talking to about 10 coaches, the categorical “no” from earlier had started to turn into a “it doesn’t sound that bad, it’s actually quite interesting what they have to offer“. So, the next step was to go to the States in order to visit five universities that I thought would suit me best.

I organized myself as to make all these visits in one trip and spent three days on each. I was shown the campus, with the athletic facilities, the dorms where I would be living, met the staff and girls on the tennis teams, and got a sense of what my schedule would look like within each college.

About a month and a half after these visits, I chose the college, and that was the University of Kansas. Here – I considered at that time – that I would be offered the highest level on the tennis side, but also on the academic one in the field I chose to study: “Exercise Science“. After I signed with the university, I took the SAT and TOEFL exams, which I had been preparing for since I started considering the option of leaving. After I passed my exams, I applied for university, got my US student visa (F1) and got up the courage to leave for four years.

O.S.: I know that at some point you moved to another college, because you didn’t fit in at the first one. Please give us the details:

I spent my first two years at the University of Kansas, now I’m at the University of Nevada in Reno. When I chose Kansas, even though I thought it would be the best fit for me athletically and academically, I had some pretty bad experiences that made me want to transfer to another University. The team environment was toxic for all the players. The coaches were very strict and negative with us, the positive reactions being almost non-existent, and their criticism was discouraging rather than constructive, without achieving their goal of improving anything on the court. The result was only the decrease in self-confidence of the players. In the end, what led me to make the decision to leave was the fact that my daily effort and desire to improve was not appreciated, and the coaches did not believe in me.
In singles, I played only half of the matches in the spring season, and in doubles, only four times – when there were injured girls – considering the fact that in the training matches where I faced my teammates, I was at least their equal. There were two difficult years on the tennis side where I tried every day to give my best, to improve, but the coaches didn’t see that and didn’t give me the opportunity to play as much as I would have liked to in the official matches.
In addition, after the first semester which was excellent, conflicts and arguments generated by competitiveness started to appear in the team. Thus, instead of supporting and motivating each other, in order to get the best results, some colleagues started to be cold and tried to show off in front of the coaches or created negative images of the other girls in the team. Such an environment at practice and at official team matches led to a lot of frustration and emotional fatigue that affected us on the court and mirrored in the rankings. In the first year our team’s best ranking was top 11 in D1 in the US, and in the second one we were outside the top 50 and didn’t qualify for the team national championships.

The choice to transfer was very good. This time, I was much more attentive to the perspective of the coaches and their approach related to the determination of the players. I knew better how to read between the lines and I knew what questions to ask.

Thus, I managed to choose a college where I am happy and enjoy competitions and practice again. There is a positive energy here, the effort is appreciated by both, coaches and teammates, and the support is real between us [Wolf Pack team results sheet, where you can also find mine and the article dedicated to me, when I transferred, last summer].

Silvia, at college, in various poses

O.S.: What is the schedule of a typical day at college?

The most important skill I learned in college is time management.
The schedule we have is busy and we must find time for every activity: classes, practice, physical training, recovery, homework, cooking, sleep, plus traveling for tournaments.
In the fall we have four tournaments, and in the spring, we travel about 9 weekends out of 16. When we go to competitions, we always have the laptop with us because, although the absences from classes are justified, we have to be up to date with all the homework and exams. That’s how we learned to do homework on the plane, in the car, at the airport and at the hotel.

A typical weekday looks like this:

      • 7.30-8.30: physical training
      • 8.45-9.15: breakfast with the team
      • an hour and a quarter of free time until the next class, in which I can do homework or rest a little
      • 10.30-11.45: class
      • 12.00-15.00: tennis practice
      • 16.00-17.15: class
      • 17.30-18:45: class
      • then I go home to eat and do my homework for the next few days.

My favourite subjects so far have been: anatomy and physiology.

O.S.: Do you still have time for relaxation, to see beautiful places, for fun?

Although I often feel like I’m in the army because of my busy schedule and my desire to give 100% in everything I do, there are many beautiful moments that I will always remember. Many of them, funny, such as: riding scooters everywhere with my colleagues from classes to practice, shopping and parties, traveling across the continent with my seven colleagues, who became my friends.

One of the funny stories is riding the scooters to the Halloween party at minus 2 degrees, wearing dress and winter jacket. Another one: while cooking I roll out the quiche dough with a bottle because I don’t have a rolling pin, but also training outside at 3 degrees with a hat and three layers of blouses on.

Other unforgettable experiences that I am grateful for: I swam at sunrise near the Golden Bridge in San Francisco, flew on a private jet, went boating on Lake Tahoe in Nevada, saw dolphins at sunset in San Diego, trained and played matches on the Indian Wells courts in Palm Springs, California, visited New York City, Washington DC during the Thanksgiving holidays and I will be going to Hawaii with the team before the official season to practice and play 2 matches against other Universities.

In conclusion, the college experience includes physically, mentally and emotionally challenging moments, but it also comes with many advantages: friends, travel, practice and high-performance training and recovery facilities, in addition to high-quality studies in the desired field.

At the end, I asked Silvia Costache if, after graduating from college in 2026, at the age of 23, she plans to return to the professional circuit, to play systematically.

Silvia replied that she would like to continue to do a master in the field of sports recovery, but also try to play some tournaments in the ITF circuit.

She also explained to me the rule of prize money from the ITF tournaments, when you are under contract with a university: when the college sponsors the travel to the tournament, all the prize money that the athlete wins goes to the college, and when the athlete goes to the tournament out of his own money, he can keep his prize.

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