Leaps of faith paying off for Colombian tennis player Ana Rios

Plunging into the unknown has become second nature for Ana Rios.

As a teen, she jumped into tennis much later than her peers did. After high school, she became the first in her family to move from Colombia to the United States. Then, while playing college sports herself, she seized a chance to work in her athletics department and coach high school tennis, discovering her desire to pursue a career in athletics. She has made the choice time and again to believe in herself.

With each choice, the tennis player and graduate student at Dominican (California) has learned that her belief will continue to lead her toward great things.

That journey for Rios, however, did not start without doubt. Though she started tennis at 14, she quickly rose to being a top 10 high school player in Colombia. But when the COVID-19 pandemic took a year of competition away from her, Rios' path to continue playing after high school became cloudy.

"(In high school), it was never clear if I was going to make it and earn an athletic scholarship," Rios said. "As international students, it's really hard for us to make it out of the country if we have to pay most of the (costs) on our own."

Rios did make it, earning a scholarship to play tennis at Holy Names in Oakland, California, a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics program where she played her first two years until the school closed in 2023. Before her junior year, she transferred to Division II Dominican. There, she continued to play tennis and competed in track and field for two seasons.

When Rios left for college, it was the first time she had ever been to the U.S. In a completely new environment and still learning how to speak English fluently, Rios took the move as an opportunity to challenge herself and grow. Whatever nerves she had experienced were overtaken by her excitement to play tennis and study business. 

The decision to pursue a business degree was rooted in Rios' childhood, which is filled with memories of her dad, an entrepreneur with his own chemical distribution company. 

"All my childhood was seeing him build the company … build something from zero that gave me the opportunity to play a really exclusive sport," Rios said. "I feel really like my dad really (inspired) me to study business because I saw how it opened opportunities for him."

This also played a role in why Rios wanted to attend school in the Bay Area, a region known for its business market.

"I've always been a planner," Rios said. "Of course, life happens, and the plan sometimes changes a little bit, but my general idea was always, 'If I'm gonna study business, then I need to be in an area where I get to know business.'"

However, once Rios made the move to Dominican for her junior year, she began to pursue a different plan.

This started with Rios joining the game operations staff for Dominican athletics, working game days and events. The following year, Rios also found an interest in coaching after Dominican began renting its tennis courts to the Marin Academy, a nearby private school. After she started building a relationship with the girls on the high school tennis team, she was offered the chance to be an assistant coach and loved it.

While she still enjoyed what she was learning in her business classes, these experiences sparked a new interest in Rios to learn more about careers within college athletics. The perfect opportunity to do so came in June, when she was nominated to attend the NCAA Career in Sports Forum. This gave her a chance to explore career options and introduced her to a group of like-minded peers who could help her through the journey.

"There's pressure as an international student once we graduate to find job offers that can sponsor visas and stuff like that, so going to the Career in Sports Forum and getting to connect with other international students that are in the same spot as I am … I really appreciate the NCAA being that bridge between me and other people that are going through the same stuff that I'm going through," Rios said.

With career interests in coaching, operations and administration, Rios was able to connect with professionals in each area and realized that she does not have to choose one focus right away.

"Knowing that I can do multiple things in the long term, that also was such a relief for me," Rios said. "That was really important for me having somebody else giving me the answers to the questions that have been running through my mind and nobody else could answer for me."

Months after the forum ended, Rios still keeps in touch with the other international student-athletes she met there. They have a group chat filled with their career goals and plans to visit one another soon. 

Rios' goal after completing her current business administration graduate program is to pursue a master's in sports management. She also wants to find a graduate assistant position where she can gain more experience working in athletics. It is a goal much different than what she planned for when she started college, but one she thinks she is ready to take on.

Rios hopes her story can inspire others who want to become an international student-athlete like her to take a leap of faith like she did.

"Don't let the fear of what can go wrong stop you from all the good things you can take away from it," Rios said. 

"You're not alone, either. The people that have been with you all this time, they're not gonna disappear. They're gonna still be there for you. And don't fear change because change is good. Without change, there's no opportunity for you to grow and step up."