UTRGV athletes and staff embrace fears

Ivan Palacios | THE RIDER

Everyone has something they are afraid of. Whether it is spiders, or snakes or the dark, we all have fears. For student athletes and those involved with UTRGV Athletics, their fears are a little different than most. 

Andres Cortez, a redshirt freshman on the UTRGV Men’s Golf Team, has been playing golf since he was 3 years old. While not many things scare Cortez on the golf course, he has had his fair share of frightening experiences. 

“My last high school tournament actually was at state,” Cortez said. “We took the long drive up there. We were there a day before so we could play a practice round, but when I showed up to the practice round I didn’t have my putter. I was like ‘No way. How do I not have my putter?’ My parents were courageous enough to make the drive all the way back and get it before the day started.”

Although forgetting his putter was one of Cortez’s scariest moments on the golf course, what he fears the most is showing up to a match and not being prepared mentally to play. 

 “Mainly, it’s just, not being mentally prepared going into the match,” Cortez said. “I mean you have X amount of weeks to prepare for a tournament. The main thing is just being mentally prepared, but whenever you show up that morning and you don’t feel prepared it’s, just like, ‘What am I doing here?’ Other than that there’s always competition. There’s always a certain golf course. Like maybe it’s ranked one of the hardest in the state. Just little things like that.”

Valeria Montero, a redshirt freshman on the UTRGV Women’s Tennis Team, had a similar frightening experience. 

“We were going to UTSA to play against a couple of San Antonio schools, and 15 minutes before my match, we had just finished getting lunch and were on the court warming up,” Montero said. “I pulled out my tennis bag and the slot for my tennis shoes was empty. I told my coach, ‘Wes, I messed up. I don’t got shoes.’ So we had to haul so fast to the nearest store and grab any shoe that would work.”

Like Cortez, her biggest fear does not come from physical objects, but rather from her own mentality.

“I feel like I have multiple ones [fears], but my biggest fear would definitely be losing focus and just getting upset and tanking a match,” Montero said. “I don’t want to waste a match like that.”

Not only UTRGV’s athletes have fears, even those behind the scenes like Assistant Athletic Director for Marketing Sara Hernandez have fears when it comes to gameday. Her fear is playing the wrong national anthem or the anthem not playing before a game.

“The funniest one, because I have a recurring nightmare, like a literal nightmare at night, is playing the national anthem,” Hernandez said. “That’s a very special moment because everybody is quiet and everybody knows what to expect. Sometimes, some other times in the game, if we can’t play a specific song or a video, there is something else we can do to kind of mask it, so that people are still entertained. With the national anthem, you can’t do anything else but play the national anthem. I have actually had nightmares about the national anthem not playing or me playing the wrong national anthem.”

She also recalls some of her biggest fears during a meet from when she was a hurdler at legacy institution University of Texas-Pan American.

“I ran the hurdles so there is always a chance you were going to fall,” Hernandez said. “That was really scary. It happens, but it’s also really embarrassing if it does. So I think literally falling was one of the fears. But this is probably a recurring one, that people probably don’t share as much, and that’s really having to go to the restroom when you’re about to run. That’s really scary because you’re about to exert force. It’s kind of scary and I’m sure other sports experience the same thing like you’re on the court and you really have to go to the restroom. There is nothing you can do about it. You just have to stick it out.”

For Senior Associate Athletic Director for Communications Jonah Goldberg, his biggest fears come when he is on the sidelines during games. 

“My biggest fears are for basketball, or volleyball or sports where I’m really close to the action, that a player will come flying onto the broadcast table,” Goldberg said. “They’ll knock over the laptop and break it, not on purpose of course, but they’ll fall onto the laptop and the equipment and everything will break. I’ll get knocked off the air. I’ll lose everything in my computer.”

He almost saw that fear become a reality while broadcasting for the Rio Grande Valley Vipers a few years ago.

“I’ve had a close call once, when I was with the Vipers a few years back, with a player named Jawad Williams,” Goldberg said. “He did come flying onto the table. It was a two-tiered table, so there was a top section and there was the actual table where our stuff was. He landed on the table, on like the top area, but he didn’t roll over onto all of our stuff. But it was close.”

While these fears are very real for both athletes and those behind the scenes, some have their own lucky charms or rituals to ensure things go well.

“I carry a certain amount of tees in one pocket, and I always carry two dimes and a quarter in the other,” Cortez said. “It’s just something I’ve always done since I was little. Oh, and another thing, I always play with a golf tee in my mouth, just sticking out of my mouth. If I don’t have any of those things going on then something is wrong.”

Montero also has her own lucky outfit and has to wear at least one blue sock each game. 

Goldberg’s pre-broadcast ritual consisted of him sharing a Twix bar with his co-anchor. 

He views fear as a learning experience that shapes you into who you are. 

“Fear can be a really good thing,” Goldberg said. “It forces you to adapt the way that you work and it definitely did that for me.”

About The Author

Ivan Palacios

See author's posts