Coach Tanasoiu shared some incredible insights into the lives of student athletes. Being friends with some student athletes on campus, I got to understand their lives better with the Coach’s talk about particularly tennis team. He first emphasized about how time management is crucial when you have to practice for hour in the early morning before class, attend class, and do another 3-hour practice in the afternoon in middle of all the studying that needs to get done. His reminder to the team about how privileged they are for representing the university motivates the team to always be focused on the team expectations. A great piece of advice that he tells his team is that adversity is your best friend, which is so true in that your obstacles in life whether it is competing among teammates for playing positions or interviewing for jobs is what pushes you to perform at your best level. Moving stories that he shared about his personal life dealt with the importance of relationships in particular the support of parents and coach. In his life, his parents sold a car to make sure he got the opportunity to fly from his town in Romania to Miami for the Orange Bowl competition. He was extremely grateful for all the help of his various coaches in taking care of him throughout his path all the way to now Men’s Varsity tennis coach at Cornell. The recruiting focuses on these relationships when trying to help the player make a decision between multiple university offers. He talked about how they are recruiting one of the best Russian tennis players next year because they had talked to not only to the father, sister, and coach but they also included the mother, which other universities did not do. Coach Tanasoiu shared the interesting aspects of recruiting. When they look for players for the team, they make sure he has great work ethic for improving in the sport and has a good academic potential. Since the team is so international, some of the players are on the pathway of heading to possibly play professionally and they feel that college tennis will put them off that path. However, Coach Tanasoiu feels that America is one of the few countries that allow people to further their education and play sport at one of the highest levels. Overall, it was a pleasure hearing Coach Tanasoiu talk.