1. The decision

March 2015, I was 18 years old. At this point, I was playing the lower level professional tournaments in Brazil. I was travelling with my psychologist, Aparício Meneses (everyone calls him Pe) with whom I was working at the time. Since the tournament was not that far from Rio, my father decided to drive to watch me play since he always liked to watch my matches and it was a rare occasion that I was playing close to home.

I had just lost in the quarterfinals. My father, a tennis lover, contacted Pe to talk about the match – or so I thought. Brazil was in a difficult situation. My father was worried that he would no longer be able to provide the support that I needed to give me the opportunity to play professional tennis.

Hours later, on the way back from dinner my father did not waste time: “I told Pe about my situation, it’s difficult Ingrid, he told me stories of college players that he worked with in the past and had a successful career and they are now on the circuit playing professional tennis. I thought it was interesting, so I started doing some research about this opportunity for you to go there. Look at the e-mail that I sent you and see what you think about this idea.” I didn’t have any reaction.  I stayed silent; I didn’t know what to say. The only thing I knew was that I didn’t want to talk with my father at that time, I never thought about going to college in America before.

Before that point, going to the USA to study and play tennis had never been an option. My family and I had never considered this possibility; we had no clue what college tennis was about. I wanted to stay on the professional circuit.

Believe it or not, that simple e-mail my father sent, opened my mind to the idea. I spent the whole day thinking about it; I opened several websites that talked about college tennis (in Portuguese because I could not understand a whole lot of English). I read some stories of Brazilian tennis players that were there, searched the universities, rankings and many other things that I didn’t even know existed. After numerous conversations with my parents we decided it’s the best decision right now.

“Life brings surprises to you, so do not be frightened by suffering, it helps you fill in your book and brings you teachings in the future.”